When Toby and Anton were babies, life was a wild ride. We put Anton’s crib in the bathroom for a while since it was the darkest room in our apartment. I once went to dinner with a male friend only to realize my milky breasts were casually dripping onto the tablecloth. But, when I had coffee with my friend, Nikki, this morning, she told me a story that still managed to make me laugh…
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Says Nikki:
When I breastfed my first child, I was a big overproducer and got many clogged ducts. Luckily, I’d catch a possible clog pretty quickly, and I could usually fix it by pulling my nipple up to my mouth and sucking it out before it would clog too badly.
But one day, my whole left breast got super, super hard, like rock solid. I couldn’t move or lift it at all. I tried to get my baby to suck it out but she couldn’t. I tried my pump but it didn’t help. I tried massaging my breast in a warm bath.
Finally, I called in my husband. Looking up from the bath, I was like, ‘Dude, I need your help,” and pointed at my nipple. His eyes got huge, and he was like, “I don’t think I can.” But of course he knew he needed to. This was also our first Valentine’s Day since we’d had the baby.
So, he knelt down, and every few minutes I would take my breast out of the water, and he would suck on it. He needed to suck really hard, so I would be like, ‘Harder, harder!’ and he’d spit the milk into the bathtub. The bath water got cloudy with milk. He finally got it, and after a few more sucks, it loosened up a bit. And he was like, cool.
We now call our bathtub the scene of the crime.
I want people to know that this shit happens! I had two mom friends from those early days, and I FaceTimed them from the bath and said, YOU GUYS GUESS WHAT JUST HAPPENED. After we laughed, they were both like, ‘I would 100% do that in a second, if you asked me to,’ which was really, really nice. I feel like mom friends would do anything and tell each other anything. You don’t ever have to be embarrassed. And it should be that way.
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Nikki’s story reminded me of the show Catastrophe, when Sharon forgets to pack her breast pump for a Paris trip, and Rob offers to suck the milk from her sore breasts. (“At least I won’t shit myself when I do it,” he points out.)
What about you? What funny stuff has happened in your household? Parenthood is a rollercoaster! Maybe we should do a column called ‘Stories from the Trenches.’
P.S. Breastfeeding in public, and going from one kid to two. Plus, “why formula feeding was best for us.”