The Last Feed

A poem about my experience of breastfeeding my son.

*Warning I did start to lose it and crack at the end as I read this one💔*

The Last Time

You look at me, slightly confused

As I weep hot rose petal tears

You don’t know why.

I can’t announce it

Would be odd

To say

“This is the last time we’ll do this”

Might put you off, unsettle you

But it’s a decision I’ve made.

.

Has to stop sometime, right?

Right?

.

I’ve been gentle about it.

Gradually whittled it down.

Now it’s just once a day,

Before you sleep.

Physically, I’m sure you don’t ‘need’ it

But I know that you…..as I

Value the bonding and sensual act

.

Feels like our ‘healing time’.

Putting right the wrongs.

Smoothing over the cracks the day brought us

I love the rhythm

Doze dotted with lazy nuzzles

You judder sporadically

Like someone who can’t really be arsed to eat

But moves their jaw habitually

It’s the way someone chews gum

Forgetting, remembering, forgetting….

.

Physically, the experience is like no other

It’s different to the way a lover takes to my breast

Because there’s no ‘end game’

It’s not a prelude but an act in itself

Passively giving

And there’s such joy in that

To just…..be…..

And that be enough for someone

Nourishing whilst cherishing

Truly nurturing someone.

.

I remember the first time.

I’d been so keen to feed you

Because we’d spent the first night apart

How you guzzled like a greedy seagull!

No trouble latching on

Reassuring me we belonged.

That you were mine.

It felt like something I was good at.

“How do you do that so fast?“

My friends would ask

As I’d hitch up my top and velcro you on.

Maybe mothering would be ‘my thing’

Maybe…..

.

Then came the times I knew you’d be away from me.

3am, I‘d be hooked up to a breast pump

Making sure you’d have enough milk for those few hours we’d be apart

Felt like an animal as I watched myself expelling liquid.

The harsh yet comforting realisation that I am….

First and foremost, a female mammal.

I’d cry for cows, suddenly making sense of that noise they made in early summer.

The frantic pacing, the way they tossed their heads, searching for their baby, udders full, cracked and leaking.

I felt closer to cows back then, than to any man.

And I admit,

Sometimes, I was that mama cat

The one who’s had enough

Exhausted, batting away her offspring

Desperate to reclaim her body

From the endless trudge of factory function

.

My mother made me question.

If I was enough for you

Perhaps you needed ‘topping up’ with formula

It wasn’t so much that I believed her

But couldn’t bear the thought of you hungry or sad

So I did it.

Topped you up.

With stuff made in factories

By people who didn’t know or love you

I fed you the beach coloured granules that mocked our time as sand grains.

Besides, it had to stop sometime, right?

Right?

.

And here we are, the final feed.

It’s another degree of separation

Ultimately, what I want.

But such is the paradox of being a parent

That we crave our own space yet also to retain closeness.

As mothers, aren’t we always withdrawing?

Backing away.

After all, it’s someone else’s show.

I pull myself away, retreating….

Your mouth continues to do *that thing*

Ghost feed.

Every so often, your lips move up and down

I don’t know this at the time

But you’ll continue to do this as you’re sleeping

For at least another year.

And I’ll take small comfort

In the fact that your mouth remembers.

.

Has to stop sometime, right?

Right.