A surprise find

In digging through the freezer, I came across a surprising discovery – six bags of frozen breastmilk. The sensation was one of weirdness. That is my body fluid in the freezer, I thought. How strange.

I remembered back to the days of collecting and storing it, of stressing about it, of managing my life around it. It seems like another era entirely.

Overall, I’m glad I did it. When we saw other babies develop crawling, walking and speech skills more quickly than River, we thought he was going to be of average intelligence. But lately, we’re seeing signs that perhaps he might be smart after all (he has very high levels of empathy). If breastmilk does in fact add up to five IQ points, I’m now thinking those will come in handy.

At the same time, I’m so glad it’s over. It’s so nice to not have liquid leaking from my breasts. It’s so nice to not have to attach myself to a machine. It’s great that anyone can meet River’s need for nutrition and I no longer need to plan my life around it.

However, remembering how much work it took to get that stuff out, I wasn’t about to throw it away. Who knows how old it was – a year? More? Less? I figured he’d reject it if he didn’t like it. But, like usual, he didn’t react at all. Sustenance is sustenance and he doesn’t seem to care whether it comes from a breast or a cow or a can.