Salty and Sweet

My breasts are full again and I reach for the baby-mint gender-neutral coloured plastic sucking device and rhythmically squeeze my milk out into the bottle. Ten minutes each side, then unscrew the lid and drink my own sweet liquid. Aaaaah...

In certain ways it is similar to masturbation. Satisfying most of the time, a beautiful act of auto-eroticism and self-care, a treat to relieve horniness or the desire to be touched or boredom or to cure whatever ills you. There is a 'money shot', a release of tension, and milk is just as likely to stick your magazine pages together as most other bodily substances. But sometimes the yearning to share the pleasure almost overwhelms me. At these times a pump is no substitute for the mouth of another. Only one half of the equation is being filled, the self/self pleasure circuits satisfied but not the desire for self/other mergings. Those moments of blurred bodily boundaries that breastfeeding entails by its very nature and design.

Before my milk came in there was a time when I dry-nursed someone whom I loved and who loved me, while the rain beat down around us. It was Sanctuary. The eyes that looked up from my breast seemed to recognise this, there was vulnerability and trust and abandoning of inhibitions. It felt pure and unadulterated.

I miss such connections, and sometimes as I pump the tears fall and water down my efforts. Breastmilk is both salty and sweet.