Imagine you are the skipper of a boat.  You navigate between two banks—American culture and the culture of your home country.   Go too far in one direction and you feel stuck, not yourself, like you’ve compromised and you’re not moving forward.  As you sail along, you encounter sandbars, the difficult situations in life when you have to get out into the swift current and push. The stork has dropped babies into your boat, so it’s not just about you anymore.  Folks from both banks holler tips.  Some advice helps and some is lost in translation.   The thing is, you’re the one who has to get out and push your boat free.  No one else is going to do it for you.  You must quickly discern the right way before the sun sets.

Nursing for the first time required me to get out of my comfort zone and push.  Why nurse, first of all?  What’s all the hullabaloo about? Why not just buy some formula?  We know that breast milk is best for the baby, nature’s food for your little one.  It improves cognitive development and contains antibodies that help the baby’s immune system.  Furthermore, breastfeeding may also help kids avoid diseases such as diabetes and cancer later in life. But more than anything, it’s such a sweet connection between you and your baby. Many cultures expect women to nurse at least for the first year.  For example, if you’re from the former Soviet Union, you’re expected to at least give it your best Sputnik shot.   But as you may or may not know, nursing isn’t easy, especially in the culture we live in.   It’s really hard to prioritize nursing when you need to worry about making money, not milk.  To say, no, this baby is more important than my comfort and sleep (and sanity. Just kidding) takes courage.  This article is about my experience with nursing while trying to keep going in my little boat, SS Just Make It to Six Months!

With my first child, labor exhausted me completely and then I had a C-section.  After I saw Sasha, I just remember going to sleep perfectly happy.  I woke up in my own room, away from my daughter, and then went back to sleep. I wasn’t nursing.  I was sleeping.  But after I rested, the staff moved me to where Sasha was and let me try nursing her.  A wonderful lactation consultant also brought an electric pump that helped get the party started.  Thankfully, I didn’t need this with my boys, but given how exhausted I was, my body needed some extra encouragement the first time.   I will always remember Sasha’s eyes going wide when she tried the colostrum, communicating to me “I want more of this stuff!”  Like a hungry little squirrel.

A few days later, my milk came in.  This is always a funny moment.  One of my friends told me that when her milk came in, she put on a bikini and walked up to her husband.  He was like “Wha?????”  And then they had a photo shoot (that’s it.  Just a photo shoot, guys). Because when your milk comes in, it’s like you got huge implants.  Which is entertaining, until you actually have to nurse.

So, unlike implants, I hope, your chest when your milk comes in is basically like two rocks of Gibraltar.  Your body makes so much milk so that your baby can have all she wants, and then your body is supposed to regulate the supply to match the baby’s needs.  I learned this at La Leche League.  I explained it to my mom.  She wasn’t buying it.

“Nado stsezhivat’, a to budet mastit!”  Meaning, you need to manually drain your breasts completely every night or you can get mastitis.  My grandma had mastitis, and it’s like the fear of mastitis was passed down the generations.  I do not want to make light of mastitis because it can be extremely dangerous for mommy.   However, it was like the Ghost of Mastitis Past was haunting me—

“NADO STSEZHIVAT’, LENA, NADO STSEZHIVAT’!”

Oh my God.  Not again.  I was starting to feel bad for cows.  And of course, there was a right way and a wrong way to drain.  “How about we invite the Russian neighbor who has kids so she can do it for you?”  Oh my God.  The person who said this wasn’t kidding.  It was a perfectly normal idea to invite someone over so they could “milk” me (in the olden days, before electric pumps, that’s what the nurses used to do in certain countries). No, that’s okay.  Really.

I bought a hand-held Medela pump, but it still wasn’t an enjoyable experience.  Thankfully, I did not get mastitis.  At about six weeks my milk supply dropped or Sasha started eating more.  The ghost went away.  It didn’t return with my two boys because after the first few days, the boys had no trouble drinking all the milk, so there was nothing left to drain at night.  Take that, ghost.  Praise God!

The moral of this story is that nursing is really tough, and is especially so if you’re doing it in a multiple-cultures context.  Going back to the boat analogy, some of our people dive in from their bank and swim close to you so that they can guide you as you push your boat off the sandbar.  This is really beautiful.  They want to help so much.  So you want to listen and heed their advice because their earnestness has warmed your heart.  However, you still have to think for yourself.  And so you have to diplomatically communicate your truth to the people you are so grateful for and love so much.  At the end, though, how wonderful to have their wisdom.

For example, let’s say there’s a stressful situation and your body starts to produce less milk.  In other words, after the engorgement period, there can be the “too little milk” problem, and then how great to have the wisdom of multiple cultures.  You learn you have to drink water (or tea with with fenugreek, nettle, dandelion, or lemon balm.  Or black tea with milk) and eat certain lactogenic foods (oatmeal, apricots, carrots, spinach, asparagus, salmon, and brown rice, for example).  I especially loved carrot juice in the morning (but I hated having to eat more and more when I would have loved to look like my old bad self, skinny and skipping off to yoga).  You also have to avoid some foods (tomatoes, citrus foods, chocolate) and drinks (carbonated beverages and coffee) and stay away from sage, mint, thyme, and rosemary.  This is important information, something that directly impacts both your life and the life of your baby.

At the same time, how do you like someone telling you what to eat and drink?  How about that someone being a few months old, and communicating it with her brazen cries?  At the end of the day, of course you change your diet because you want what is best for her and you’re prepared to do anything.  But it’s still frustrating to have to be so flexible for someone else, someone who has just lived inside of you for nine months and took whatever nutrients she needed any time she wanted.

In other words, I think the biggest difficulty in nursing is the psychological one.  It’s hard to deal with the fact that someone is so dependent on you.  You can’t go on a weekend retreat because who’s going to nurse your child?  Sure, you can pump and freeze the milk, which I did, but who wants to do that? And then you’ll have to pump while you are away, too, because when your breasts are full, it hurts, and you also don’t want your supply to drop.  Jeez. You’re going to wish you just stayed home.

One of my friends confided to me that this dependency was the hardest thing to handle.  It helps one understand the husband if he is a sole provider.  But it’s still not the same.  You have to literally feed someone else with your own body.

One of my friends was talking about her frustration with nursing and her husband said, “Tebye eto nado?”  Do you need this?  This is so hard.  Let’s just do formula.  I appreciate how understanding that man was.  I can almost hear Tony Robbins saying, “Do you need to tolerate this?”  It’s a good question that no one but you should answer.

In my case, I had set a goal of one year, and my family was very supportive.  The truth is, if you make it to six months, you feel much better because you can start feeding the kid solid food, so it’s not all on you anymore.  That’s why my boat could be called SS Just Make It to Six Months!  That’s all I kept telling myself.  Just make it to six months, girl!  And I did.  And then seven. And then eight. And in total I fed both Sasha and Andy for a year and a half each.  Now, I finally made it to a year with Mitya, because I’m a tenacious mother.  Ironically, I am more reluctant to stop.  Not only because I want to build up his immunity during flu season.  But also because he’s probably my last.  And when am I going to have this beautiful closeness again?  It’s hard to let go.

Listen to Eastern European women wrap up a conversation.  It takes a while.  “Nu, ladno.  Do skoroy vstrechi. Dershis’.  Davay, davay. Tsem tsem.  Do zavtra.”  It’s like a little pep talk you’re giving the other person.  Contrast that with the American “Bye!”  Peace out, sucker!  So, although I may want to be like, “Yo, you’ve had enough, little man!” there’s also the “Okay. Let’s just make it to March.  We can do it, dude.”  In reality, you have to meet in the middle, and you have to love yourself, too.  You’re not just a milking machine, darn it.  You are a human being, and you need your freedom.  Using your head and your heart to find a compromise that makes sense.  In the meantime, praise God if you can even nurse one day, never mind 365!  What a miracle, right?  To be able to feed your baby with your own body.  What amazing wisdom your body has.  And how important is your support network, even if sometimes you have to agree to disagree.

Hey, no matter what you went through today, at least no adult suggested that another adult milk you, and that’s a plus! I’m keeping it in perspective as I am amazed by my perseverance, encouraged by the people on both sides of the water.   Thanks to my family and friends who helped me reach my nursing goals!  We did it!  We moved forward!  Thank you, Lord.