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How Tandem Nursing
Birthed Me as a Mother of Two
Double-Stacked Side-Lying Nursing
Position
Here's the picture. My distraught
two-and-a-half year old daughter is
insisting on nursing, lying down
"like a baby," on a favorite spot on the
bedroom floor. I know that if I can just
nurse her down to sleep this temper
tantrum will be over. I realize that my
best bet is to lie down and nurse
her on the lower breast. This way I can
stack my three-week old son on top
of her and he can nurse my upper breast.
So there I was thinking, Okay... did I REALLY sign up for this in
the tandem nursing package?
In my fatigue I gently lowered my
newborn's drowsy head to rest on his
sister's arm. For a moment the house of
cards stood, complete and perfect.
But only a moment. I may even have
imagined it. My toddler quickly and
resoundingly erupted in objections to the
imposition, and we were back to
square one. It was then that I was knew
that SOMETHING was very, very wrong.
The Four Tandem Nursing Surprises
When my baby was first born and I nursed
both children together I felt like
Earth Mama. Peace, harmony, mama-love,
and sibling bonding at the breast: it
was a dream come true... but we had a few
surprises the day after the baby's
birth day.
Everyone expects regression, right? But
-- Surprise Number One! There was no
greater or more frequent challenge during
the first few weeks than my
daughter's steadfast insistence on
nursing cradled "like a baby." No,
there's really nothing quite like having
to sit, several times a day, with
legs spread tailor-style, imagining the
stitches in between popping
one-by-one, so as to support the large
and wiggling body of a nursing
toddler. Add to that her delight in pulling off (making me leak) to
"root" so I could
"help" her back on. And did I mention she "couldn't hold
her head up?" Now add a tender, but
thankfully hardy, newborn on the other
breast, and try to keep the toddler's
feet and arms from doing permanent
damage, and you're really looking at a
job for the many-armed woman.
Surprise Number Two. Ah yes, Testing of Limits, the age-old
tradition of an unsettled sibling. The battle ground
for testing limits was my breast, and
I must hand it to her, my daughter chose well; I had a lesson to learn there
that I couldn't have learned so well
anywhere else.
If I said no to "na-na"
she wailed. If I said yes, she subjected me to an
endless series of misbehaviors at the
breast. She would never end a nursing
session voluntarily. I was forced to
recognize that my hitherto
eager-to-please daughter was TRYING to
drive me crazy. Forcing me to draw
the line where I least wanted to, at the
physical symbol of our former
intimacy.
The next surprise still shocks me in
retrospect - can it be that I really
experienced a lapse in my love for my
daughter? In fact I remember that
while I was pregnant I felt a little
sorry for the child in my womb, and a
little guilty, fearful that I could never
find for a second child that
intensity of true love and adoration I
still felt, almost painfully, for my
first. And yet - Surprise Number Three:
as I wallowed in love with my
newborn I found it incredibly difficult
to relate - at all - to my first
born.
I suddenly found her normal speaking
voice loud, her presence jangling, and
her body ungainly and huge. She seemed
unfamiliar and almost grotesque
nursing in my lap, as if I were nursing a
teenager. I looked at her and
tried with great concentration to recall
what it was that had seemed so
achingly endearing about her just days
ago.
My eyes, ears and heart were doing
tricks on me, like "fun house"
mirrors. It was as if my biology was
plugging me into the newborn only by
ripping the connection I had with my
first.
Within a couple weeks, the bizarre
distortions dissolved like a bad dream and, thankfully, I could
see my daughter's wholeness and
beauty once again. Now I had to find my
way back to her.
And so I stumbled headlong into Surprise
Number Four: my darling daughter was
in on the conspiracy to put distance
between us. I was no longer Mama. I was
just "NAAAA NAAAA!" To
compensate, she began to pour herself into other
relationships like never before. This
strategy worked fairly well until her
godmother flew home and her father went
back to work, something mother
nature had evidently not been counting
on.
How I Catapulted Things from Bad to Worse
After
particularly contentious days I would lie
awake at night grieving for the lost
sense of intimacy with my daughter, feeling helpless to
renew it and yearning to curl up against
her little body, so appealingly
innocent in sleep, and make up for all
the love I failed to deliver to her
during the day.
And somewhere in there we both began to
expect me to meet her emotional
needs by nursing, and on her terms... as
if by meeting her Olympian challenges
I could somehow prove my devotion to her
once and for all and we could both
sleep easy at night.
I knew that she needed me to set
boundaries -- I had this vague understanding
that when children test limits they crave
the reassurance which secure
limits provide. But I found myself
stretching them... and stretching them... and streeeeetching them. When she tried
my patience at the breast I gave her
third and fourth chances before finally
taking her off my lap. I was so
afraid of letting her down, at the
breast. I said yes whenever I could.
When push came to shove I would have
given anything to split right down the
middle and give both children what they
seemed to need.
From there it was just a few short hops
over to the aforementioned ridiculous nursing
position known to mama-kind. I don't
think Double-Stacked Side-Lying was in
my nursing manual.
Course Correction
Desperate, I tried a radical experiment.
"I'll give you na-na when it will
feel good to both of us." If I
didn't like a behavior at the breast it
stopped or we'd stop altogether. No fear.
A clear boundary. Soon, etiquette
came back. A warm feeling ebbed back in
to our nursing. Debates, scuffles,
and wheedling about "na-na"
continued, but I found it made a big difference
that these exchanges existed in the
dialogue dimension -- in the space
between us -- not at the breast.
I continued to struggle in vain for a
conviction that we had what it took to
make it through. And yet all the while,
an invisible something was at work,
bringing us to safety. Slowly, it began
to dawn on me, my daughter's purpose
in all that limit-testing at the breast.
If I could really say no to nursing
-- a lot -- with no apologies or guilt,
right in the middle of a family
crisis, then I sure as hell MUST believe
that we could both take it.
I MUST believe that the important things
like boundaries were still just as
important now as before.
I MUST believe that I was enough mama for
her even if I wasn't able to DO
all the things I used to do for her.
I MUST believe that our relationship
could TAKE our feelings, our sadness,
fears, doubts, and anger which arose,
most immediately, as a result of that
boundary being firmly preserved, and more
generally as a result of the new
baby in the family.
And so, amazingly, by the end of the
first month, the dust was beginning to
settle. All that had been up for grabs,
the very bonds that connected us,
having been doubted and tested, were
being reaffirmed. Nursing, with both
children and separately, began to assume
the character of the important, but
routine. Her disappointments over "na-na"
came into scale with her other
skinned knees and toddler travails.
Epilogue, and Fond Farewell to Tandem
Nursing
My daughter went on to nurse for another
18 months, and I have long since
forgotten what it was like to have only
one child. I remember our tandem
nursing crisis as my screaming labor pain
of being birthed into a mother of
two. Funny that the truth I had to work
so hard to find was right there from
the beginning, outlined in our triangle
of nursing on the first day my son
was born. One Mama, two breasts. I have
enough to give both children just as
I am. We are each of us only human. And
in the honest sharing of what is
truly ours to offer, we are
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