Mei liber, mei pera. (Nummies be gone!)
FREE TO A GOOD HOME: extremely well worn size 34 and 36 C and D brassieres.
I no longer have a need for them, unless I plan on using them as planters to pot cheery flowers in to hang around my home, where I’ve spent the last few hours moping.
Breastfeeding my children was not a choice I thought about much. When my daughter was born I was too lazy to really read parenting books so I did what I felt came naturally. Nummies, as it came to be known after an embarrassing situation in the grocery checkout lane when my kid corrected me as I put the milk on the conveyor belt. “Not milk, mommy. DAT milk!” double-fisted poking of my boobs right in front of two Amish gentlemen.
And so, nummies it was.
And nummies continued because she was happy, I was happy, I’d heard all these great things about the benefits of breastfed babies, and I selfishly liked the daunting task of sitting down multiple times a day. In fact, we liked it so much that I nursed her for 26 months.
Until the next child came, and I nursed him for 28 months.
The third one, despite her dairy allergy and sacrificing my love for brie and yogurt, I nursed and ate cheese-less pizza for 29 months.
Grand total: 83 months of being inflated and deflated, stretched and squeezed.
There are a lot of facts available about the benefits of nursing your children, the biggest being a lesser chance of breast cancer. But I didn’t do it for myself, I did it for my kids. They loved their nummies, and I honestly feel like it gave each child a special bond with me that is both beautiful and unexplainable.
However, it also left me with two things hanging off the front of my chest that at first glance liken themselves to a windsock on a calm day. What were once plump and attractive are now like week-old balloons, wrinkly, empty and small. My nipples have become absolutely asymmetric, one pointing in one direction, the other somewhere completely different, never to agree again until that fateful day when they both point directly at my feet.
But would I change one single thing? Give up a single session of cuddling and nursing my babies? Do I regret having shown my boobs to half of Wayne County at one time or another?
Absolutely not. Mei liber, mei pera. My children, my bags. I’d have that tattooed right across the front if it wouldn’t be so shapeless and disgusting.
Instead I’ll stand in the dressing room in the underwear department with my brand new push-up bras, and sigh.