Member-only story
La Leche League Can SUCK IT
My baby was born on Thanksgiving Day 2013, a month early.
I’d had preeclampsia, and we both almost kicked the bucket: me from a scarcely-avoided seizure, she from meconium in the amniotic fluid, plus a placenta that had almost completely detached by the time they got her out by c-section. Through the miracle of modern medicine, we defied nature.
Like all new moms, I had high hopes for what she would be like and felt certain of what I, as a mother, would be like. Naively, I was not worried at all.
I joked that the sugar I ate was to make her sweet, the occasional sip of champagne to make her happy and carefree. That when she was hungry at night, I’d just have her dad attach her to my boob and keep sleeping — he was a natural night owl, after all, so would be available to take care of it. I was so ready for how perfect it would be.
From the beginning, things did not go as planned.
One thing they don’t tell you about c-sections before-hand is that they tie your arms down so that you don’t start flailing them around or inadvertently stick your hand in the wound while you’re totally out of it. This makes sense, but I hadn’t known to expect it, and it wasn’t until the doctor brought my tiny baby over that I realized I couldn’t reach out to her. He touched her cheek to my cheek, and that was our first…
