And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready

by Meaghan O'Connell

I’d had this idea of what breastfeeding would be like. Not the physical experience, but the lived reality, the timing, the way it was supposed to fit between other things. I thought it would be something happening in the background while I went about my actual life. How else would it be tolerable? The faint sucking sound of a breast pump during a conference call, a shirt lifted up on the subway, so seamlessly nobody really notices it. Baby legs kicking in the aisle of an airplane, his head and my tits hidden under a gauzy blanket. I wanted to be one of those women who, without missing a beat, pull out a boob at a restaurant, midconversation. That’s how they sell it to you: It’s so convenient! Always with you. Natural. Completely free! “Breastfeeding: It’s So Easy!” is how one popular breastfeeding website puts it (every breastfeeder with an internet connection has spent way too many late nights online reading guilt-provoking articles from lactation consultants). But this easy, natural bodily function took focus, if not on the task at hand, then on the clock. Skip a feed and you mess up the whole supply-and-demand thing. Skip a feed and the milk you didn’t express may never show up again, like a friend you cancel on too many times who no longer answers your texts. You can get a clogged milk duct, a painful, inflamed blockage that can then lead to an infection called mastitis, which is like having the flu and then getting stabbed in the tits at the same time. Worse, your bab...