“Do you think she’s hungry?” Jeff asked on one of those first days home.
Do you think your body is failing her ... again?
That was the question Gwen heard.
When they took June to her first pediatrician check-in, the doctor said, “Well, she’s not back to her birth weight, and we like to see that by this point.”
Gwen had selected this particular pediatrician, this Dr. Goodall (as in Jane), because she had excellent reviews online and was known to be very holistic and pro-breastfeeding and not the type to condemn co-sleeping. But now she hated this doctor.
“Herbirth weight?” Gwen said, rage simmering inside her body. “You mean the weight she was when they cut her out of my body.”
“Hon,” Jeff said, putting his hand on her thigh.
Gwen stared at his hand there, atop the same sweatpants she’d been wearing for days. It didn’t seem like her thigh, but like someone else’s thigh, attached to her body. She stared and stared.
The doctor clasped her hands in her lap and said, “Mom, maybe we need to talk about howyou’redoing.”
Mom.
Gwen wanted to slap her.
“I’m fine,” Gwen said, nearly spitting the words.
The doctor cocked her head, considering, then took a deep inhale.
“I want you to come back at the end of the week, okay? I want to keep a close eye on June’s weight ... and on you.”
Gwen said “Fine” again and stood up, clutching June to her chest. As she stomped—yes, stomped—out of the exam room, she heard Dr. Goodall say to Jeff, “Do you mind hanging back for a second?”
Gwen paced the waiting room with June for five minutes, waiting for Jeff to emerge. She knew they were talking about her—how inept and irrational she was. She had lost control of her own existence ever since they’d wheeled her into that operating room. Since then, she had become someone to be managed, someone who required the imposition of a stranger’s expertise.
Jeff looked apologetic when he came out. She didn’t ask him what they’d discussed because she didn’t want to know.
Gwen scoured the internet for tips to improve her milk supply. She ordered a bulk pack of fenugreek tea from Amazon, paid an additional $2.99 to have it delivered the same day. She filled two sixty-four-ounce water bottles and made sure she drank both of them every day. Hydration was key, Google said. She offered June each breast whenever possible, whenever June was awake and alert. When she dozed off, Gwen used the pump, watched how little was trickling out through the tubes, furious with herself. Other women were producing so much that they had to buy an extra freezer to keep in their garage to store it all. They posted photos of frozen milk pouches literally tumbling out when someone opened the door in search of a popsicle.
Insurance paid for a lactation consultant named Mary to come for a half hour twice a week. Mary was fifty years old and talked very slowly. Gwen couldn’t tell if she was talking slowly in an attempt tocalm Gwen’s noticeably anxious energy or if she was talking slowly because that was just the way she talked. When Gwen said that she didn’t think her body was making enough milk, Mary did not disagree. Instead of assuring Gwen that her body was magical and that it knew exactly what to do to nourish June, Mary said, “Give yourself grace, dear. How is your body supposed to focus on producing milk with all you’ve been through?”
Mary suggested that Gwen consider supplementing with formula. Jeff was sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Gwen when Mary suggested this, and Gwen could see him nodding out of the corner of her eye.
“I’m not doing formula,” Gwen said.
It was the first thing she’d said with any kind of conviction in days.
“It’s just something to consider,” Mary said.
“I’ve considered it,” Gwen said. “I considered it throughout my pregnancy and read every fucking book on the planet and educated myself about every single benefit of breast milk.”
“Babe,” Jeff said.
“Everyone is acting like I don’t know anything,” Gwen said.
She stood then, June resting on her bare breasts, her nursing bra folded down over her possibly still-infected incision, and left the room, even though there were ten minutes left in their consultation session.
She didn’t want them to see her cry.
She didn’t want them to know that she was starting to realize that she actually didn’t know anything.
It was sometime in the blur of these first days home when Angeni Luna began to feel like a beacon in the darkest night, a friend whispering in her ear, saying, “Dearest, you are her mother. Do not let the medical establishment and your clueless husband lead you astray. You know everything you need to know.”
