Letters to Luc: White Gold

Dear Luc,

Some days when I am trying hard to console you while you continue to scream no matter if I hold you, cuddle you, bounce you, swing you, rock you, sing to you, play with you, or try to put you to sleep, I think about how you will not end up remembering the hardest parts of bringing you up in your infancy. You won't remember the spurts of sleep I get, never to have a long and complete stretch again, setting alarms to nurse you and bring up your weight. You won't remember how I watched you sleep, letting the precious hours eek by--hours that used to be filled with meetings and cranking out tech manuals for important project deadlines--content just to marvel at how I made such a precious, growing boy. You won't remember how it broke my heart to hear you cry, or how it hurt me to watch you pricked with needles for your blood tests and inoculations despite the brave front I keep up to tell you to be strong. You won't remember how I plugged my nose and downed bitter, rank-smelling herbal teas in an effort to conceive you, or how I ate chicken soup seeped in the same herbal concoctions in hopes of bringing in my milk to feed you. Not those fenugreek or blessed thistle pills I hurriedly swallowed to bring up my supply before rushing back to you as you screamed to be picked up; not those lonely hours chained to the pump to make milk to freeze, or the late nights that I sat slouched over with sleepiness, working the manual pump to relieve engorgement. Not the few times in the day when I am back at work, pumping in a small room with my laptop next to me, striving to feed you for a whole year on breastmilk, thinking of you and missing you.

But maybe, just maybe, you will remember that when all else failed to console you, my milk usually would. My milk that took 4 days after you were born to come in while I cursed my body for being slow and incompetent, before marveling at just how much it's been through, and continues to go through, to provide for you. Maybe I will tell you about my pride, after having been able to give you the smallest drops of colostrum, to feel the white gold coursing through my breasts on the first day I was able to pump enough to fill a small bottle halfway.

I read about the benefits of breastmilk, its anti-viral capacities, the way it subtly morphs in enzymes to give you exactly what you ask for as you create a vacuum with your suckling and silently communicate your needs with the source. Higher fat content past the first few weeks so you could pack on those baby rolls. Elevated levels of melatonin at night as you cluster-feed to help you sleep. A magical something to help you fight off fevers and germs. It became an addiction to pump between your feedings to freeze and store.

I navigated different pump parts, hacked a fit with different sets of bottles, navigated different flange sizes for best output, baked and ate lactation muffins, and gradually increased the amount I was able to produce.

I thought I finally had it made with my supply until I decided to test-feed you one of the frozen batches of milk. Whereas before you gulped down what we gave to you from breast or from bottle without complaint, you fussed and spit out the milk and gagged. I discovered my frozen milk was too high of lipase, a enzyme in human milk that helps break down the fat. This causes some women detect a soapy smell from their milk; others say the milk smells metallic. I know it smells different from the milk you are used to, fresh and warm from me, and that is why you turn it away and dribble it out when your mouth fills with it. Almost 200 ounces of saved up milk, and you don't want to have anything to do with it. I had to get creative with how to feed it to you for when I'm back at work. I mixed ratios, first half frozen with half fresh, then a 1:3 ratio, frozen to fresh, which you seem to tolerate.

I read up on scalding the milk to neutralize the smell and watched YouTube tutorials on how to do it just right, turning the stove to 6/7 and watching as tiny bubbles formed on the surface.

Then the quick cool-down, pouring the milk into a glass jar--burning my fingers more than once from inexperience and bad aim--and dunking it into an ice bath before measuring and pouring it into milk storage bags, labeling, tallying the total stores, and tucking them away into freezer Ziploc bags.

I marked the bags from oldest to newest and the scalded batches, yet another step in my quest to keep you on breastmilk and not succumb to formula.

The top shelf of our Frigidaire freezer became stuffed with your milk stores. I sent a batch to Grandma after a few power outages taught me the value of insurance and not tucking all my eggs in one basket.

You still favor fresh milk as of today, lazily holding the bottle nipple in your mouth without sucking, a coy smile playing on your lips as you play a game of chicken to see who would outlast whom during the feeding game. These days I indulge you and top you off from the breast so that you'd gain weight from your measly 7th percentile ranking in growth.

All this you will not remember, how my dedication to you pours out in the form of this white liquid gold. As you grow up, we will be at odds more than once, when I will not let you have your way with toys, games, and social outings. You will be mad at me, thinking I am unfair to you, slamming your door and protesting dinner as you protest your meals now, playing a game of chicken. You will more often remember the injustice, the anger, the resentment. I know this because those are the searing memories that come to me now that I am grown, for all those times I thought my own parents were being unfair as they were raising me. But I hope that you will remember the love, too.