The Magic of Making Milk

☆★Today's post is Day 15 of the #31WriteNow blog challenge. I'm posting a new entry every day for the month of August★☆


I breastfeed Tové. I breastfed Tempess. Yet, I'm still amazed when I get to witness myself making milk. It may be sophmoric, immature, simple-minded, whatever. I still find myself in awe every time I see milk coming from my body.

Bear with me. As children, we're taught that milk comes from cows. I've seen cows being milked in movies, TV shows, cartoons. I'm sure somewhere as a child, I witnessed a human mom breastfeeding her child. But if I did, I can't recall it. My earliest memory of anyone nursing is at the age of 16. That's the earliest I can recall ever being introduced to the idea of breastfeeding.

I remember the first time I squirted in the shower. Man that shot far. Wow. Whenever I pump and I get what I think is a good amount, I feel like I just won some type of Olympics. Hey babe! Look how much milk I pumped. This was all from ONE breast at ONE sitting. I probably should be over the amusement because I exclusively breastfed Tempess and am currently exclusively breastfeeding Tové.

WRONG.

A trip to the ER for a ruptured cyst and raw nipples have me pumping and dumping and taking a break from the pump for a few days. So I'm hand expressing milk. Nowhere near as efficient as nursing - or even, dare I say it, pumping. And because hand expressing leaves me with no free hands to occupy myself while making milk, I'm forced to watch myself make milk. And again, I find myself easily amused by the patterns the streams of milk make, the velocity in which it exits my nipples, the changes in consistency that happens, etc. This stuff is really magic. It's amazing to think that not only is my body capable of creating a tiny human and then delivering that tiny human into the world, but my body is also capable of sustaining said tiny human too.

Don't get me wrong, this magic isn't always easy. In fact, it's been harder the second time around. But it's been magic nonetheless.