How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane Read Online Free Page B

pumping bra, turned on the pump, and then watched it stretch my nipples through a transparent sleeve, like Augustus Gloop going through the pipes of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.
    Now that I could actually see the milking process, I understood the problem. Milk wasn’t flowing, it was eking out of my nipples, like tiny beads of Elmer’s glue. One hour of Hoover-strength milking left me with a grand total of a half-ounce of milk. And most of that came from the right breast; the left was completely useless. If my right breast was a slacker, my left was its illiterate cousin who lost half his brain in a tragic pig-farming accident.
    But I would not be beaten. Over the next few weeks the husband bottle-fed the child, while I pumped every three to four hours for up to an hour at a time.
    I learned all about “galactagogues,” which, though it sounds like an alien form of governance, is actually any substance that encourages lactation. As a result, I ate oatmeal in large amounts, drank Guinness beer in small amounts, and ingested an herb that made my skin smell like a combination of maple syrup and curry (mostly curry).
    I took a prescription medication for reflux, one side effect of which is increased lactation, another side effect of which is depression. A positively hilarious situation for a new mother, if you think about it!
    I went to breast-feeding support groups and listened to other new moms complain about their problems with excessive flow, saying things like “Ah-ma-gad! I am literally gussshhhing! I’m storing the excess in our freezer—looks like we’ll be drinking breast milk with our coffee for the next twenty years!” I smiled with empathy while imagining punching them in their overflowing gazongas. *
    But mostly I pumped. And pumped. And pumped. And pumped.
    Until little by little, drop by drop, my milk started to flow—or at least dribble. Not nearly at the rate the child was drinking, but enough that I could supplement her formula feedings with a little of my own milky love.
    I was winning. Soon we would be the very picture of skin-to-skin maternal bliss.
    But, as one slow-flowing nipple said to the other, “not so fast.”
    The child did not want the breast.
    When I offered my ever-so-feebly lactating nipple to my daughter, she would give it a look and a suck and then scream into it like a rapper yelling into a microphone. Sometimes I’d try to fool her by making her laugh, and while her mouth was open I’d jam my nipple in there. But she never took to it. Instead, she’d just stare at me like I was some kind of sick pervert.
    The worst part was that she could be calmed only by the other Binky, her pacifier: i.e., a silicone version of my nipple. This is what is known in the breast-feeding world as “nipple confusion.” But if you’d asked my daughter, she would’ve said there was no confusion. That savvy four-week-old knew exactly what she wanted, and she couldn’t have been clearer if she’d e-mailed her thoughts to me and b.c.c.’ed her lawyer. It was hard not to take it personally—almost as hard as it is to saw through a silicone pacifier with a steak knife.
    I continued to pump around the clock and would then pour my liquid gold into little bottles that the husband would then feed her. I did this for five months until it occurred to me that the six hours a day I was spending with the pump might be better spent with my child. As much as I believe in the benefits of breast-feeding, I believe in the benefits of bonding even more.
    That’s when I eighty-sixed the pump, and from five months of age, my kid became 100 percent formula fed. That was five years ago, and now she’s a happy, healthy, lovely child, and I’m at peace with my choice to abandon breast-feeding. *

    * Boobs, tits, ta-ta’s, “the girls,” chesticles, naughty pillows, “Buddy & Bernice.” These are all phrases I