…in 2016. The days that followed his birth were cold and isolating. My experience with my milk coming in was a memorable component of those days. The only reference to lactation that was made prior to my leaving the hospital was by an OB who said it might happen and to not wrap my breasts in case of mastitis. None of this meant anything to me at that moment.

Two nights after my son was born, my breasts became rocks— red, hot, and painful. The only resources we had were two OB friends without any of their own experience counseling women through this but asked their networks and the deep darkness of the internet. My husband went to the store to buy me sized large sports bras and it took the two of us to stuff me into them. We bought cabbage from the grocery store and antihistamines and NSAIDs from the drugstore. I was on a strict rotation of frozen cabbage leaves and ice packs in my bra, antihistamines around the clock, and sage and mint tea as fast as I could drink it. Something I read told me to avoid allowing warm water to touch my chest in the shower or the milk my start pouring out. I stepped into the shower the first night at home, and felt the icy drops on my back as tears streamed down my face, blood streamed down my legs, and milk dripped from my breasts regardless of my efforts. My entire body was weeping for its lost son. It was the deepest pain— emotional, physical, and spiritual—I have ever felt.

I wish I had considered saving some of that milk for my future self but I was so afraid of what my body was doing. I was angry and ashamed of this body that had betrayed me and allowed my son to die that I wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to punish it for not protecting him. So I pushed through frigid showers in the dead of winter, ice in my bras, frozen cabbage, and the bitter taste of hot sage tea on repeat for days alone with my husband in our silent home that we had prepared for our son. Some of what I read online vilified women who did not donate their milk; part of me wanted to give the one thing I had to help other families but I was confused and angry at my body and didn’t want to bestow any of that negativity on anyone else. I also was afraid I would always then associate that one experience of pumping with the sadness of loss and didn’t want to injure any future chance to reframe my thinking around lactation if I had the opportunity to make milk for my own baby again in the future.

One week later, the bras were suddenly looser. No milk dripped onto the cabbage leaves. I stepped hesitantly into my first hot shower and nothing came out. Looking in the mirror, I noticed my deflated abdomen, empty of baby, and my drooping breasts, now empty of milk. The physical evidence that I had carried and birthed my baby was fading rapidly. I missed in some ways the fervor of managing the milk. It was something that still tied me to my baby. Soon there would be no outward evidence that Raspberry had existed or of my motherhood.

I am lucky to have been able to carry another baby and hold Luca in my arms now. My milk experience with him was strangely familiar (red hot rocks) and then entirely different. The resources we had the second time around were tremendous— it felt like everything is geared towards helping women make milk. We saw several local lactation consultants and had unlimited access to positive breastfeeding support through online communities and friends. Everyone was open about sharing and hearing our experience this time, as compared to my first time where I felt alone and that there was no where to turn for support or reliable knowledge. No one asked me to share stories of my lactation after loss— that experience felt shameful and like it should be hidden. We had our struggles initially (poor latch, nipple shields, triple feeds and inclusive supplementation, mastitis, pumping at work) but this baby loved his mama milk, nursed for an entire year, and drank my milk until 16 months. I mailed my oversupply as peer donations to friends and acquaintances all over the country. I often wondered if Raspberry would have been a mama milk baby too had he been given the chance.

This body that I felt had failed my first and brought me pain and sadness fed my second baby and several others. I have gotten to experience two versions of motherhood and two vastly different lactation experiences. I hope that we can better learn to support families during loss both physically and emotionally and provide them ways to speak openly about their loved experiences, validate and memorialize their babies and their grief, and to limit the shame, isolation, and loneliness particularly of the early traumatic days after loss.