Just about every woman will tell you that after you’ve had a baby in the hospital, all modesty is lost. This usually pertains to the hospital stay as providers and nurses parade in and out of the room to help you breastfeed, check your fundus, check your bleeding and so on.
But as an over producer of breastmilk, I never really get my modesty back. And in the quest for relief from engorgement, I have zero cares about this.
If you are a breastfeeding mama and haven’t heard of the Haaka, do yourself a favor and go order one now. This is not an official endorsement (I am not cool enough for a blog like that) but it is 1036393628% a pro tip of mom advice.
I am essentially a cow. Apparently this runs in my family. My mom has some pretty funny stories about the size of her chest when her milk came in and my dads astonishment. She said it was like looking at two watermelons and she called my dad to tell him “go to the store and buy the biggest nursing bra you can” and because they didn’t have pumps as readily available back then, a nurse came in and essentially milked my mom. I’m telling you, when your boobs get to that level of overfill you don’t care how the milk is being drained! Bless that nurses heart!
Anyway, this time around I’ve made an effort to not pump as much. The whole supply and demand thing is strange. I pump because my boobs grow into my armpits and I can’t put my arms down, it hurts to wear a tight shirt and I’ll come undone if someone hugs me first thing in the morning. That being said as I’m pumping my body is telling itself “see the baby really does need all 30oz. MAKE MORE”
In fact I’m such an over producer I’m pretty sure my boobs weigh more than Raelynn does. A few days ago I decided to weigh myself. Which is always a nerve wracking thing to do postpartum. I made sure to do it when my hair was dry, because everyone knows wet hair adds three pounds, this is obviously scientifically accurate regardless of hair length. I made sure to do it on a morning where I had just finished pumping and had also had a nice poop. This is imperative because scientifically speaking poop is waste inside your body, I don’t want to know the weight of my waste. So clearly the best time to weigh oneself is post poop with dry hair and freshly emptied breasts.
Except, my boobs, even when empty feel heavy and full. It’s annoying. Trying to jog with these pups is like casually throwing boulders toward my chin and also yanking my chest muscles down to my knees forcefully. It’s quite unpleasant.
At any rate, I weighed myself, and then I thought well I’m only 9lbs from my pre-pregnancy weight. Surely my boobs weigh roughly 3-5lbs each. I considered laying on my floor and just sort of flopping a boob up onto the scale purely for the sake of gathering evidence to support my hypothesis. However, at the risk of my husband finding me sprawled out on the floor weighing my breasts individually and thinking I’d truly lost my mind this time, I refrained.
The world may never know the true weight of my postpartum breast....
All of T H A T to say, that in effort to prevent mastitis and keep my boobs somewhat comfortable and manageable (they truly get wild and unruly when full of milk) I have to use the Haaka every time I feed Rae Bae. Which means not one but B O T H boobs are out in full view every time I’m getting set up to feed.
I’m past the point of caring. I just need comfort and my baby fed. Sure sure I have a cover and I use it when I’m at church, or sometimes in public but mostly I just get down and dirty with the task at hand. I mean the cover makes it impossible to see how full the pump is, and how well Rae Bae is feeding. Which (this just in) is actually something I need to pay attention to with her because she decided to not transfer well and lose weight. So that’s another story entirely!
Me getting set up to feed involves everything out for like a minute. There are two kinds of minutes.
The “I’m running down the stairs to the door now, it will take me a minute” as in 60 seconds or less and the “are you done picking out a birthday card? Yeah I’ll be done in a MIN-UTE” minute, meaning it could be 60 seconds or it could be 30 minutes we just have to ride this one out. Me getting set up is the latter of the two.
And my father and father-in-law have come to expect this. As have my mother and mother-in-law. Even aside from my single attempt at a vaginal delivery, my father and father-in-law have seen entirely too much of my body too often for what is considered socially acceptable.
But again, when it comes to milking, I’ve lost all my modesty. And really what is modesty as a mom anyway? Especially a mom of girls. Even when I TRY to be modest and go to the bathroom alone, closing the door for privacy, they just barge right it anyway.
Modesty by definition is “behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency.” But that sort of implies one has a choice in the matter and as a mom, do we really get the option to be modest every time we want to?
Regardless, in the name of honest ramblings of motherhood, if any of you happen to visit me while I’m breast feeding you can expect to see one, if not two, of my boobs fully exposed either for a minute or a min-ute and I won’t apologize for it. You can either lock eyes with me and attempt to pretend it isn’t happening, focusing on whatever sentence you were in the middle of when I started, or you can casually turn to the side, away from me and start an entirely different topic. Heck leave the room if you must, but these obnoxious cow utters attached to my body wait for no one!
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