All His Babies

Our first daughter, age 5

After eight years of marriage (six without birth control) and numerous appointments with a specialist in New York City for tests and fertility drugs, we adopted a five-year-old girl. Within a year she had a bedroom in our first owned-home, and from her window she looked across Valley Road to a willow tree over a brook in Edgemont Park that had a duck pond and a playground. Our second daughter was born twenty months later. Years after, I considered the two to have a soul link meant to bridge my emotional infertility. The first daughter taught me I could be a mother; then the second, knowing that it was safe, arrived.

Without joining La Leche League,* I read about breastfeeding. When I had a painful blocked milk duct and our baby doctor told me to stop feeding (our first disagreement), I called La Leche League and was told to continue, and the block cleared.

When the doctor told me that all his babies started on orange juice at four months, I said that I wouldn’t be doing that; he must have pressed for juice because by my next words he was upset to discover that I had fired him.

In third grade our older daughter was bussed to a magnet school with educational enrichment and an after-school gymnastics program, where watching her practice one-handed cartwheels while I nursed the baby was a joy of their age difference.

My realization is, “For a position received from a gut reaction that disagrees with a professional view, courage may be necessary.”

*La Leche means “the milk” in Spanish. La Leche League is an international non-profit organization that promotes and distributes information on breastfeeding.