Revenge of Super Boob
Swallowed Up By Spring Break
*This is the third piece in the Super Boob Saga, written about a month ago after our kid’s spring break from preschool. You may also enjoy reading the first two: Super Boob and Super Boob The Sequel.
Last week was spring break which meant that we had both boys home all week and way less childcare. It was kind of a shit show whirlwind and I’m still recovering. It began with a vacation where my husband and I left both kids with my parents and drove to hot springs, stayed in a log cabin, slept all night, and made sweet love. We had 2 nights away which is the most time we’ve had alone together in over a year, since having our second baby. We went on a beautiful drive over a pass into Idaho and worked hard to let go of the layers of stress we’ve accumulated over this year of hard-core parenting. Two babies is wild! I’m exhausted.
As we drove away from the babies I took deep breaths and began to actively relax my body, noticing the physical and mental holding patterns. We stopped on the way to our cabin to soak in hot springs, melting our sore muscles from lifting fat babies. We laughed and flirted and swam in the cool pool outside breathing in the fresh mountain air and the scent of freedom. Then we drove up and over the snowy pass and down to our cozy cabin with a wood stove. We went out to dinner, sat by a raging bonfire, and then fell asleep early.
I slept naked, which is a rare treat these days ever since having babies. I used to always sleep naked but these days I need the fabric of pajamas to protect my nipples from getting pinched or bitten at night when the babies comes into our bed. It also protects my vagina from getting kicked by baby feet. Safety pajamas.
Both nights we fell into bed early, exhausted from the day, and our year of sleep deprivation. Both mornings we made spontaneous sweet love, our naked skin warmed by the fire. I breathed in the scent of wood smoke and fresh mountain air by a river. I embodied the sensuality of the river and fire. My orgasms felt like rushing water and bursting flames.
Everything about our vacation was delicious except for needing to pump milk so my boob didn’t explode. I discovered that my left boob is practically empty but Old Righty over here got super engorged and painful after a day without being emptied by the baby. Super Boob came back! Somehow I thought I wasn’t making very much milk anymore because I haven’t pumped for probably 6 months and our baby eats lots of solid foods now. I realized that even though our baby only breastfeeds a few times a day, he’s guzzling a full bottle of milk from only my right boob each time. Wow! What a weird wacky world there is inside this body.
In ordinary life my boobs appear to be basically the same size. By the second day on vacation my boobs looked and felt completely different. The left one felt normal, medium sized, and about as droopy as you would imagine an average 36-year-old’s boob. (It’s OK, you can imagine!) The right one was hard as a rock and giant. It looked as if I had one enormous breast implant.
Day 2 of our vacation we hiked to some incredible natural hot springs that flow out of the mountain from a hot water fall. My husband and I climbed down the mountain to soak with some cute college girls. Spring Break, remember?! My husband got to harmlessly flirt with these cuties because I was there making him seem safe and responsible. It was adorable. Then the girls left and we had the whole place to ourselves. Of course we got naked, despite my embarrassment about having one regular boob and one Super Boob. It still felt glorious to be naked outside being kissed by the sun, immersed in hot water, surrounded by snow, right next to a freezing cold river cascading by. Then more college kids showed up and we threw our swimsuits back on before they could see my freak-show boobs.
I really like to think of myself as being “body positive” but there’s something so vulnerable about having my boobs change size and shape within a day, like they have a mind of their own and suddenly they’re totally unfamiliar. At one point I turned to my husband and said, “You are one lucky guy because these boobs are so different it’s like you get to make love with 2 different women in one body.” This made us both laugh, but in truth he had to be very careful not to bump into my right breast too much because she was very sore.
When we got back home I rushed to my baby to urgently breastfeed to relieve pressure in Super Boob. Amazing how well the baby can drain this boob, way more efficiently than any breast pump. It’s as if we were built for each other. Soon after getting back my husband said he wanted to go to the gym to lift weights (he does that now) and in my after vacation glow I smiled and said something like, “No problem, Lover.” My parents left and my husband went to the gym and within an hour I was totally stressed and strung out again.
You see, I changed my baby’s diaper and put him on the potty but of course he immediately got up and pooped on the floor and when I went to pick him up he peed on me. So I scooped him up in one arm, with the cloth diaper in the other hand and took him to the bathtub. This was the moment our older son came in and said he wanted a new show and more snacks and suddenly all of the stress and overwhelm was back in my body. Just like that. I texted my husband, “Please come home, this isn’t fun anymore.” He came home and we stabilized. All the poop and pee was cleaned up and all the snacks were snacked.
It felt like an important discovery to experience how fun loving my husband and I were while we were on vacation and then how quickly we began to hate (too strong?) each other once we returned to the stress of “Baby-town.” I had this realization that parents on “Babyhood” really need a lot of support to cope with the stress of it all. The stressors are real. There’s no way around there being plenty of stress, once you bring a baby or two into the mix. How do we deal with the stress together in a way that we maintain the fun, romance, flirtation, spontaneity, passion, and love that brought us together in the first place? It was alarming to witness our own re-falling in love experience on vacation and then how quickly the wave of stress returned coloring everything in its path.
Since then we have re-stabilized and fallen off the wagon a handful of times but we learned a lot from this experience and are more aware of giving ourselves that luscious, timeless vacation feeling. Even if just little tastes of it, like making love in the afternoon when the baby’s sleeping and the little dude is at preschool. I take hikes with my dog and turn my phone off so I can slip into the wilderness peacefully. I give myself moments throughout the day to feel myself, my feet on the ground, breath filling and emptying. Just me, rather than me in relation to other’s as a caretaker, which has become central to my existence these days. I remind my husband to treat me like a sexy woman and not just a “gentle mommy,” to help me remember this part of me. It’s a lot to wear all these hats and to keep all the parts of me alive so they don’t suffocate. I noticed how easy it is for the “sexy woman” part to suffocate with 2 babies around because I forget that this is part of me too, when I’m wearing a nursing top with boogers (or is that baby poop?) on the sleeves.
One trick is to use clothing to dress as different parts. When I take off my nursing top (shirt with a flap to expose boobs for easy access), I take a deep breath and let go of this role temporarily. Then I put on other clothes to feel like a grown-up individual. Or I get in a shower or bath to wash away the day, feel my body, and let go of accumulated stress.
It’s not easy but it’s worth it, this Baby-Town. I get more and more glimmers each day about how fun our life is about to be, all the adventures we can take these boys on, and the richness of witnessing little lives becoming. I love these boys so much, even in the chaos and tumult of it all. They came into my life and changed everything. Now it’s my job to find all the pieces and put them back together in a new way.
How do you let go of your daily stress? How do you cope with/embody all the different parts of yourself and all the hats you wear? How do you keep the romance alive? How are your boobs doing? :)