Today Corey and I went to the farmer's market with our (almost) one year old son, Connor. We met up with our friends, Jason, Marlow, Janine, Janine's 15 month old daughter, Sarah, and Eva. Marlow is 6 months pregnant.
Janine mentioned that Sarah still nurses and that she provides her milk. I have to say, I'm a little envious, because I blew my milk supply by my own arrogance. I had been tired of pumping three times a day, and always needing to come home to nurse as soon as I was able to. My nanny said that I didn't have to nurse so often, and so I took that to mean that I only had to pump/nurse twice a day, and in so doing I wiped out my supply. Oops. So now I dry nurse. That said, I still have a lot of milk frozen in the refrigerator that is still good.
When we were talking about Janine, we asked her about whether she froze her breastmilk, which I guess she doesn't do a whole lot of. I mentioned that frozen breastmilk has this awful aftertaste that makes you want to vomit and it tastes like vomit, and Janine, Jason, and Marlow were disgusted: "You mean you taste your own breastmilk?" And to that I say, Yes, but if you froze it, you would understand why. It's not like we're sneaking it into people's drinks, or whooping it up with breastmilk.
"Would you like some soda?"
"No, I'll take the breastmilk, thank you very much"
The downside of frozen breast milk is that (as I've found out), when you thaw it after it has been frozen, it's always a good idea to taste it to see how it tastes. From my perspective as a mom, I don't want to give my baby anything that I wouldn't want to eat myself. And that includes breastmilk. Does it taste good? Then it's good for baby. Does it taste rancid? Then I don't want to give it to Connor.
But all of this was difficult to explain to our friends. They obviously didn't approve of our practice of tasting the breastmilk, and I was surprised that Janine was in the same boat since she nurses. Even though I had a good explanation, it was difficult for me to tell this to them, so we sat, judged by our friends, and not in a good way. And I realized that this is something that I have to learn to overcome.
One of the things I had the misfortune of learning from my mom was only going so far to communicate what I am trying to communicate; and this goes the other way: I have a limitation of what I can take in as well. This showed up when meeting with Marlow, Jason, and Janine today. I saw my mom in myself when I was trying to catch up with the conversation. It's easy to try to attribute this to paying attention to Connor, but I know that I would experience this even if Connor wasn't there. And I see that it is hard for me to say what I need to say, in this case, that there is actually a good reason to taste breastmilk.
I hope next time I can say what I need to say when it's a good time to say it. (Before I do that, I will need to figure out what it taking up my mental energy that prevents me from doing so. More on that in future posts).
And next time I'll extol the virtues of breastmilk and just how yummy it is. It tastes good and is good for you. Yum!
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