All this birthday recollecting made me dream about breastfeeding. Lord knows, I'm a pro. I nursed each of my children for a year. Lina has been weaned since 1998, and Huck since 2001, but I still feel that sting in my ducts whenever I hear a baby who just can't be consoled. My breasts want to leak milk to feed that baby, and even though there is no more milk in my breasts, nor will there ever be again, they tingle and sting in an effort to give any random baby what it needs.
Last night, this was the theme of my dream. I felt the sting and tingle of milk let-down (and if you have breastfed, you know exactly what I mean.) It was so strong in my dream last night, that, when I awakened, I expected to see that my nightgown was wet, as it often was back in the day.
I am done having babies. I have been duly sterilized and am proud of it. I didn't like being pregnant. I didn't like childbirth. I know that goes against the whole pagan/goddess thing, and I hate that. I really do. But the fact is, my pregnancies and childbirths were experiments in terror.
However, I loved breastfeeding. I would be a wet nurse, were there such a market these days. I don't wish for gestation or childbirth. I dream about nursing.
10 comments:
I'm not sure why not liking being pregnant or childbirth would be anti-goddess. Let's face it, we aren't all meant to be fecund. I've never been pregnant, never had a baby, and never wanted to. I don't think that makes me a bad woman in any sense. It's just not something that I was called to do in life.
Oh, and childbirth? It's a nasty business. A miracle, yes, but nasty. I've delivered or helped deliver several, and it was always nasty. But that's just me. *shrugs* Doesn't mean I'm less of a woman or less feminine. I don't look down on women who feel differently than I do, and they shouldn't look down on me. We're all part of the glorious diversity that is life.
My instinct is that nursing dreams are about closeness. Most nursing mothers I've talked to who enjoyed nursing talk about the closeness and bonding they find in the process. Dreaming about nursing is possibly a desire for that closeness and bonding, which I would think would be a normal response to your children getting older and less physically, constantly reliant on you. That's just my guess. What can I say, I just can't resist interpreting a dream.
As I'm closing in on menopause and I find myself wanting to be pregnant again. I'd love to have more babies but those days are long gone, I'll leave it to my grandkids.
While I managed to nurse until my girls were each about 5 months old I still cringe at the thought ... it was never easy, never natural and always hurt.
And yes I felt like a failure as a mother and as a Goddess-worshiping Witch at the time.
While I didn't have the easiest pregnancies, nor the easiest births ... but I mourn the fact that i will never again experience either.
Mama Kelly
2witchesblog.wordpress.com
Now, I never experienced either a pregnancy nor a birth (except the 4 I attended as a coach) But...my breasts do tingle when I am in the presence of a breastfeeding woman. A longing, I suppose to have been able to really *know* what that is like. I wonder too what it feels like to have a life moving around inside of me at about the 6 month gestational age...long before the baby and my stomach and lungs are fighting for the same space.
And yet...my heart runs around on the outside of me times 3 in the form of my "Russian Rastafarians".
And I thank the Universe for that.
Giving birth was not exactly a pleasant experience for me, either, but I still dream about it. And not the emergency c-section, not able to see your babies until they are hours or days old experience that I had, but unmedicated,"natural" births like I had assumed I would have.
I take them as a sign that I have something creative in me needing to be birthed. Or, I get all paranoid about failed vasectomies and start obsessing over my cycle. lol
And I, too, grieve not being able to have more children, but it just wasn't in the cards for us. And I wasn't all that sure that it wasn't the child I wanted, but the "birth experience" that I had not had the first two times. And that is a sucky reason to have a baby, so I didn't.
Not having breastfed, I have not experienced the stinging you mention. But I have wondered this: Is the nursing sexually stimulating? I would imagine it was, and no perversion is intended. I wondered if it might work as birth control at some level. If you are feeling sated from nursing, you won't need it from the man. Less man, less chance of getting pregnant so soon.
I was just wondering. There may be no such stimulation as a result. But it seems to me the two things are directly related, ie, manipulation of nipples seems to have an effect on another part of the female anatomy.
Maritzia, I agree with your interpretation of my dream.
Marthaberry, I never found nursing to be sexually stimulating. And I can't really say that it made me feel sated either. Whole different set of hormones, I suppose.
PG, your Rastafarians are pretty special. I see their picture every time I go to my fridge.
Mama Kelly, I wish I had been on a pagan path at the time of my pregnancies etc... I think it would have enhanced the experience so much.
Amanda, I don't yearn for that "natural" childbirth experience like you do. It's never bothered me that I had C sections and didn't have to stretch my coochie over a watermelon :-)
Why can't all blogs and blod entries be about big ole bouncy bosoms?
If I ruled the world.......;)
of course I meant *blog* entries, Dillhole.
Yesterday I started Bradley classes and I don't know if it was the sheer hormonal power of being surrounded by other pregnant women (hehe) but I started leaking. It really threw me since I am only 21 weeks right now. Today when I was taking a shower it started again.
I think it is really cool though, and somehow relieving, I was worried I would produce breast milk somehow.
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