A Nursing Triad

By Elrena Evans
Web Exclusive - June 20, 2008

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
~ Ecclesiastes 4:12

She loves him the moment she sees him, walking into my hospital room wearing her "Big Sister" shirt and clutching her daddy's hand. At 22 months she is suddenly huge, grown up overnight while I birthed her brother. I reach for her and she climbs into my arms, heavier than I remember.

"What's that?" she breathes, peering at the bundle of blue scrunched up beside me, sensing the magnitude of the moment.

"That's your new baby brother," I answer. She reaches out with one finger to stroke the impossible velvet of his cheek, the fuzz of his hair that is red just like hers.

"Gentle," I whisper.

"She-shul," she echoes, her wide eyes drinking him in. "Baby She-shul."

He is Baby Gentle from that moment on.

The first few days home we are babymooning—I cuddle and nurse my newborn son while my daughter toddles around after her daddy, thrilled at this change in our routine, thrilled to have daddy home to play with her all day long. Friends and family bring food and presents; we are cocooned in warmth and love. My daughter nurses on her frequent trips upstairs to our bed, and nurses when I come downstairs to rest on the couch. I experience something of a seismic shock every time I switch nurslings—she's so big! He's so little!—and I wonder as I nurse, why my daughter feels so strange in my arms, or if nursing my son will ever feel as natural as nursing my daughter once did. But I trust in the wisdom a friend imparted to me before my son was born, a friend whose own tandem nurslings are now grown. "In time, the new baby will feel just as right when you nurse," she said. "And your toddler will feel right again."

My husband holds the baby while I nurse my daughter, my husband holds the toddler while I nurse my son. I don't nurse them simultaneously; I ruled out that possibility while still pregnant because of my tendency to become sore and get cracked nipples. Nursing them separately means all I do is nurse, but it works, and we are content.

The fifth day of my son's life I sense a change in my daughter. She doesn't like this anymore. The thrill of having daddy home is starting to fade, and suddenly she wants only me. She wants me to hold her, wants to nurse constantly. "Go-gie," she demands, nestling herself into my lap. "Go-gie, go-gie, go-gie." Even nursing just one child at a time, my nipples are sore and beginning to crack. My body complains: too much nursing. But I ache for my daughter and the disruption in her life, and I know this familiar time with mama will comfort her. So we nurse. Then I nurse my son, wincing as he latches on—how can such a tiny mouth cause so much pain? I remind myself that he is brand-new, he doesn't have the nearly two years of nursing experience my daughter and I now share. But nursing him really hurts, and I want to stop. He doesn't feel right in my arms, and I find myself wishing I could just nurse my daughter. I worry that I'm not bonding with my son.

While sitting on the couch, nursing the baby, my daughter tries to climb on to my lap and steps on her brother's head. I lift her off of my lap with one arm, trying to protect the baby, and she bursts into tears. "Go-gie," she wails, writhing back toward my lap.

"I can't nurse you right now, honey, I'm nursing your baby brother."

She cries. And cries. She cries so hard she can barely breathe, gasping for air in between her sobs. "Go-gie," she says pointedly, as if I have misunderstood her request. "Go-gie." She scrunches her hands into fists; her entire body contorts with the effort of holding back her sobs so she can speak clearly, as if I am refusing to nurse her in punishment for sloppy speech. "Go-gie," she says. She shakes and shudders and bursts into fresh sobs.

And I cry with her. The baby is hurting me, my daughter is bawling, and all I want to do is hold her. I try to reach for her, awkwardly around my nursing pillow, and suddenly she turns on Baby Gentle. "Take a break!" she screams at her brother, grabbing his head and yanking him off of my breast. "Take a break, take a break." She collapses on the floor. My son startles and bursts into tears, and the three of us sob together, frustrated, hungry, wanting things we cannot have.

"Sweetheart," I say as we cry, "sometimes mama wishes he would take a break, too." I offer to read her a book: We Have a Baby, or Welcome, Little Baby! —books she loved before he was born, but she throws them to the floor in a rage. She doesn't want to read a book. She only wants to nurse.

I set the baby down and reach for her, but she bats me away and runs off down the hall, hysterical. I hear a thud and find her, in the bathroom, curled up around the base of the toilet. She is rocking in her grief, hitting her head against the cold tile floor, screams ricocheting off the unhearing walls as she cries to nurse.