![]() Or she won’t, and you figure out another path forward. You can’t figure out how to breastfeed, she won’t latch, and then - suddenly - she will. ![]() Your baby is changing in front of you, outgrowing clothes overnight, picking up new awarenesses and abilities, and you are so fixated on accommodating these evolutions that you do not realize that you, too, are in metamorphosis. Infinitesimal transformations take place every minute of every day as you become a mother. That a month, in newborn days, is something like dog years to human ones: you almost can’t believe how much you can change and accomplish in the span of a week. I didn’t know then that it was just a matter of time. I stood in awe of my friend as I simultaneously felt my heart sink, seeing myself as inferior, ill-equipped. These thoughts came whizzing through my mind like a freight train. I didn’t trust that I would figure out how to put on the nursing cover and feed her discreetly, or get her to feed at all. What if Emory cried in the car? What if I had to nurse her right then and there in public? I was still getting the hang of breastfeeding and could barely do it alone, without an audience. ![]() I still hadn’t figured out how the infant car seat clipped into the base, could barely lift it given the incision, and was in that phase of constant fluttering worry over every noise and squeak my daughter emitted. And it was unfathomable that I might drive somewhere by myself with my baby. I was an emotional wreck, crying in the shower and weeping over my baby. I felt puffy, undone, saggy and full at once. I remember being mystified by her agility and poise when she materialized on my doorstep, baby in infant carseat, looking…normal. A girlfriend of mine stopped by with her baby, who was almost exactly one month older than Emory. It was still difficult to make my way up and down the stairs and so I’d bring everything I’d need down in the mornings and set up shop for the day. A post shared by Poppylist immediately drew me back to sitting in the living room of my Chicago home maybe eight or nine days after delivering my daughter via c-section.
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