For the love of the nursies

Welcome Carnival of Breastfeeding readers...
So the breastfeeding humor for me started when I was about eight. It was the early eighties. I lived in a hoity-toity town east of Boston, where most mums did the requisite six months or so of nursing and then switched happily to the bottle. But not my neighbor across the street. She was what I would one day become: the mum who just couldn't say no. Her daughter was a fiercely independent, fiery little creature with a temper like I still have not seen to this day. And until what seemed like a pretty ripe old age to me at the time, maybe 3? Maybe more? She would shove into her mother, tearing up her shirt and pulling out the weathered, tired breast, and say, in a voice that clearly communicated that there was no other option to be had, "Mummy! Nursies!" And on she'd go. My sisters and I thought we had had the last laugh on this. Whenever the neighbor girl's name would come up, even well into our teens, we would joke about whether or not she was still nursing. When my babies were little and would want to nurse, we would use the familiar phrase: "Mummy! Nursies!" And laugh.
But it had lost some of the humor to me long before my babies were nursing. When Charlotte died, the milk became symbolic to me: to give milk was the privilege of those who had sustained life. Poison darts shot from my eyes at women I knew of who had chosen to not breastfeed. To endure the agonizing pain of a new mother's milk undrunk ON PURPOSE? To make the choice to let the milk spill, to stand in the shower with it pouring down one's chest, for the choice of not nursing? Unfathomable, to me, and ungrateful, it seemed. Suddenly the milk seemed so much more, and my neighbor (the mother) seemed much more on my team than I had thought.
We'll skip Liam, his nursing, his adoration for the nursies (he called it mimi mook) and his weaning (successful and untraumatic weaning, I might add) and go straight to Aoife, the unweaned. Drastically unweaned. Completely unweaned. Loving the nursies.
It goes something like this,
"Need da nursies".
"You need to nurse RIGHT now? But Mimi is (fill in the blank-- cooking dinner, trying to sleep, playing with Liam, taking a shower)".
"I need da nursies. Aoife tired. I need a nap." (This might be about an hour after she has woken up, but if she takes a nap, she figures she might sneak a nurse in the rocking chair)
"Aoife, wait just a minute. Mimi is busy right now".
"I sick. I need da nursies."
"Just a minute, Aoife."
"I yuv you. I yuv you, Mimi."
"Oh, honey. Let's go have a little nursies."
We curl up in a chair. She has won again, and I don't care one bit. She's so darn clever! Not even two, and she sits there and goes through all the scenarios where I will definitely give her milk. Got to reward the girl for her intelligence, right? A little reinforcement for the use of a creative strategy? And plus, what's really important?

Later, I say to her, "Aoife, what's your favorite thing?
"Nursies."
"Why? What do nursies taste like?"
"Butter."

Yeah... butter. That's cute, hey? You don't get that from the sweet little newborn, snuggled up to the big ol' boob taking in actual nutrition. Those are the words of the little snacker, who craves just the actual boob, not necessarily the butter inside it. Gotta love it. And you have to laugh.

I forgot to mention that this summer, when Aoife was age 1.2, my mother brought up the old neighbor again. Every time Aoife wanted to nurse, my mom would laugh, "Mummy, nursies". And so my dear daughter, who like her brother calls me Mimi, now says "Mummy, nursies", quite often when she craves the boob.
And who am I to say no?





Welcome Carnival of Breastfeeding readers! Other blogs participating in this Carnival of Breastfeeding include:
Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog


Breastfeeding 123


Mama Knows Breast


Breastfeeding Mums


Crunchy Domestic Goddess


Nurturing Notes