Breastfeeding: A Liturgy of the Hours

Matins, 1am

My mother wakes me in the winter dark. She is holding my newborn son, my firstborn. She nestles his body into my arms. Swaddling-clothed, he is hungry, needy, always needing. I open my breast to him and he drinks.

The night feedings are the hardest. My scarred and emptied body is trying to knit itself together again; it unravels easily into exhaustion. My bones are so full of sleep, they sink like stones into the sheets, and I struggle to rise. But I seek to redeem these night hours, that they may not leak away like so much untasted milk. 

So I imagine the bedroom as a sanctuary, the silence full of gathered saints. And in the darkness, we pray. 

Lauds, 4am

Here before dawn, my mother wakes me again. Again, my body rises from the entombing sheets to nourish my son. My milk is sweet. I tasted it once, caught drops in my chaliced palm, pressed palm to lips.

Feasting was our first mother-son encounter after the doctors sewed up my skin. Half-naked, I opened the wings of my gown and feathered my naked son against my breast. His first taste of the world was sweet. 

Prime, 6am

By this, the first hour feeding, I no longer need to be awakened. After sating my son’s hunger, my own arouses, lion-like. My mother gives me a bowl with oats and blueberries and flaxseed and milk and honey. 

These days, I am always hungry. Hunger makes everything taste brighter and richer. I delight in the sweet necessity of nourishing myself every few hours. I take deep draughts of thick juice. I devour slabs of bread smeared in hummus, squares of dark chocolate, little bowls of almonds and raisins, spoonfuls of peanut butter. Need opens its mouth continually, and continually nourishment fills it to overflowing and abundance.

Terce, 9 am

No matter what I happen to be doing—reading (often), writing (in gusts) even (tentatively) washing a couple of dishes—everything ceases at the cry of my son’s hunger. Milk descends mysteriously like a spirit—sudden and full on my son’s red tongue. 

At these fixed hours I must stop my attempts at productivity and sit. I must be what feels useless. All I can do is stare at the motions of his mouth, the flickerings beneath his eyelids, with obsessive attention.

Sext, 12pm

Sometimes after my son’s belly rounds with sweet milk, in the fullness of the light, he falls asleep. The house hushes. Voices compress into whispers. We dance the pattern of silent steps on the old wooden floorboards. We do everything, even the simplest act of pouring a glass of water, with an awareness of my son’s slumbering presence. We move with something akin to reverence.

None, 3pm

I am weary of being constantly drained. A fitting feeling at this time, when the spirit sinks low like the sun. When, according to Scripture, Christ died.

My body is attuned to his cry like a vigil-keeper to dawnlight. When my son cries in hunger, a preternatural, feral ache illuminates my whole being and I rush to him. And I cocoon him within my arms. And his lips grasp my breast. And we are so close, we breathe each other’s breath. 

Vespers, 6pm

It is the witching hour. That hour when my son weeps and we do not know why. In the descending dark, we take turns cradling, dancing, bouncing, shushing, shifting, swaddling, praying, crying. 

Is it fear of the coming night? Dread of the extinguished sun? The monsters and owls that flutter in the dark? I read once that kaleidoscopic, strobe-lit life is too much for newborns to ingest, and by the evening they fall apart, gorged with sighttastesmellfeeltouch. 

The only thing I know to do is to offer my breast, and he drinks with desperation.

Compline, 10pm

As my son takes his final draught of milk, I sit, still, in the presence of my mother. She is preparing the couch where, each night, she nests next to him, rising at his nocturnal whimpers so I can sleep between feedings. 

It is calm and quiet as he suckles and my milk works like a kind of sleeping potion. Once sated, he sleeps. Sleepy, I nestle him into my mother’s arms and go to bed in silence.

Originally published in The Windhover, Vol. 28.1.