Falling in love

It was not love at first sight. When our eyes locked for the first time, it was not under the best of circumstances; our subsequent encounters were by no means any better.

It is perhaps surprising, then, that we did end up falling in love--well, I did, anyway. When I am not with her, images of her flash in my head. Spending all my days and nights with her has not made me tired of her, but rather, strengthened this feeling I have for my baby, June. She is perhaps the sweetest being that I have ever set my eyes upon.

I learn a new kind of love... it's rooted in the knowledge that I would empty my bank account for her. That I would lay down my life for her. That I would pick up arms for her. That I will defend her against all evil. It's a kind of love so primal and all-encompassing that it would necessitate psychiatric intervention if it involved another adult.
- Sandra Steingraber, in Having Faith -

It is definitely a feeling that was neither immediate nor automatic; motherly love is not instinctive. There were times when we were still in the hospital--especially during botched breastfeeding sessions, before my milk came in--that I was in despair, unsure I could take care of, let alone love, this being.

I definitely feel that this love has been cultivated through the 8- to 12- times daily breastfeeding sessions with her. They are real occasions of intimacy, in many respects. It is through these sessions that I get to know her better--her various facial expressions (she is like a chameleon, really; looking serene and sweet as an angel one moment, all scrunched up with a frog-like expression and screaming her heart out the next), the capillaries on her face, the fine hair on her head, the delicate lines of her lips, the creases that form her ears, each of her eye lashes. Knowing that whatever I consume is conveyed to her, I am careful, more than ever, about what I eat, and the medicine I take. It is definitely a different relationship than when she was within me, perhaps more intense in a way.

The relationship of a mother with her suckling infant is considered to be the strongest of human bonds. Holding the infant to the mother's breast to provide total nutrition and nurturing creates an even more profound and psychological experience than carrying the fetus in utero
- director, Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York -

I am grateful for the opportunity to breastfeed my daughter, and I hope that I will be able to cultivate this relationship for as long as I can.