Skip to main content

The new normal



Today I nursed my baby for the last time.

This day has come for me before. Twice. But on those occasions, it was on mine and my baby's terms. Not cancer's.

I think that is what makes it all the more harder; it is the first thing cancer is taking from me. Soon it will be my hair. My energy. Possibly my breasts. And, ever looming, the ominous threat of my life. Even 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now, I will always wonder if it has come back for me.

And I cannot handle it.

Breastfeeding means a lot to me. I love tummy to tummy, putting my baby in milk comas, him holding my finger in his little hand. I love all of *our* quirky, nursy things that we do. I love wearing him in a carrier close to me where he can just nurse and fall asleep to the sound of my heart. I love when he wakes up in the middle of night and just nurses back to sleep in my arms.

No bottles. No formula. No water. No pacifier. Just us. We are enough for each other. Until I became a breast cancer warrior six days ago...

Now, I can't nurse my baby anymore. My cancer is too aggressive to wait for treatment and needs chemo immediately. Today is Monday, and I start on Thursday, exactly 8 days since I was diagnosed. No time to prepare. No time to mourn. No time...

My sweet and talented photographer friend captured special moments of our family the day after my diagnosis. I wanted to freeze a moment in time with our family, before I lose my hair, before any future surgery. I especially wanted to capture Sawyer and I nursing, as I knew our days doing so were drawing to a close. It helped in many ways to end that chapter, one which neither he nor I were ready to end. One which was robbed of us. One which I held on to bitterly until the end.


Nursing in our creaky, old rocking chair





And so here I am tonight. Reflecting.

This morning after our school run, Sawyer and I came home and nursed on the sofa, just as we had so many times before over the past six months. It was raining, and he sat cuddled in my lap, looking up at me, and fell asleep on my chest. No bottles. No formula. Just us.

Any other morning, I would have transferred him to his bed. Laundry needs folding, dishwasher emptying. But not today.

This morning, I sat there with him, to just...be.

I knew if I sat there too long, I would cry again. And I didn't want to end our breastfeeding journey like that. I wanted to be happy. So I did something I usually frown upon...I distracted myself on my phone as he slept on my lap. Usually I like to be "present". But in this case, being present was too beautiful and sad all at the same time. My heart was both bursting and breaking...

Eventually I carried him up to his nursery. It was time to leave soon for my MRI. This was it.

He woke up on the journey up the stairs, and I changed his diaper and dressed him in his new outfit from the Easter Bunny, an oatmeal hooded cardigan and matching pants with clouds on the knees. And I decided we had one more minute before we had to leave...

So we sat in the old creaky rocking chair in his nursery. The same one I nursed his brother and sister in before him. And we rocked and nursed and stared at each other.

We both knew.

That was it. It was our last time.

This evening, he cried and cried.

It was an evening filled with bottles, and formula, and water, and pacifiers. It wasn't just us anymore.

Eventually, after refusing the bottle, I rocked him in our rocking chair until he sobbed himself to sleep. I sobbed, too.

I suppose this is our new normal.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Old Lady and Yoni Steam Baths

''Hello! May I please have an ounce of marshmallow root, and an ounce of stinging nettle?''. ''Sure, but...you have to tell me first!''. ''Okay...tell you what ?''. '' You know ; Did your period ever come back? I've been dying to find out!''. Now to answer the burning question of both you and the local herbalist's, the answer is yes, my period did come back. And yes, I am such a 'townie' that even the herbalist is keeping track of my sporadic cycles with intense (and surprising) enthusiasm. I went in there right after Christmas, so less than a month ago. I was a regular for years, both there and the other herbal shop the next town ever. Even though I am not religious, I like to blend medicinal teas reminiscent of biblical times, the ''Red Tent'' days and all of that. My love affair with herbs began when I was 24 years old, as I walked past an herbal shop on my way to and from...

Twas the night before my mastectomy...

Twas the night before my mastectomy, when all through the lake, not a creature was stirring, not even a snake. The sage was lit around the circle with care, in hopes that a yew tree would be planted there. Ah, the humble yew tree. As anyone who has read a prior post entitled, ''Agony and the Yew Tree'' knows, one of my past chemo meds, Taxol, is derived from a yew tree. Since chemotherapy has played such a significant role in saving my life, I felt it was important to properly thank Mother Earth for creating it. Let me stop right here to add something before we continue; I am not a religious person. In fact, the very thought of begging for my life to an all-knowing, all-powerful God makes me want to cringe. Why? Because why has he put me in this situation in the first place? And it's not because ''everything happens for a reason'', or it's ''God's plan''. It's because sometimes people just get cancer.  ...

12x9

That's the number in millimeters my lung nodule now is: 12'9. It grew from 5'3 mm in November, nearly tripling in size. I was in tears in the stall of a middle school bathroom as my pulmonologist said the words, ''I'm very concerned''. Another teacher came in and watched my class for twenty minutes so I could pull myself together. And the rest of the day ensued, with students sitting there oblivious to my plight, ignoring my requests to quiet down, to stay on task, one even asking me to walk over and hand back her work because she was ''too tired''. And all I could think, all I could honestly think, was how much I wanted to be with my own baby. How I could be standing there with breast cancer in my lung and die prematurely and should be spending every precious moment with my toddler who was in day care, so maybe, he might have some memory of me. And instead I with my students, working under an administration who replace me in two da...