Care Work, Unpaid Labour Part I
I wanted nothing more than to have the freedom from pumping and nursing every few hours. The freedom to engage in an activity without my body being an extractable resource. I wanted a body that was my own, not weighed down by a machine or time ticking backward until a next feed. I wanted to pretend that breastfeeding wasn’t working for me, that it wasn’t as important as it is for nourishment and intimacy, but I couldn’t, and so I continued.
How’s it going? People would ask me in those early newborn days. My riposte was immediate: “I fucking loathe breastfeeding. I do it out of necessity but I cannot stand it.” I would search the internet to see when weaning starts when S would finally start needing less milk. I would do this every week as a way to turn the calendar pages in anticipation. It didn’t happen when he started solids, it didn’t happen when he was on three meals and two snacks a day. He would guzzle 6-7 ounces of milk at a time with his dad or caregiver, meaning if I had been gone at work all day I would need to pump 12-14 ounces of milk prior. That is a lot of fucking milk to pump.
And then he started daycare. At daycare, he drinks between 0.5-1.5 oz of milk in a time he normally could drink fourteen. The caregivers have tried everything but he doesn’t want it. He shakes his head no no no. I am anxious—how can he go from twelve ounces to 0? How can he get enough? He climbs all over my body for up to 30 minutes at a time when he is home but is that enough? Is he weaning from my milk when in public? As excited as I should be to have my body free, I am not ready for such a change, so abruptly.
I still have to pump when he is away to keep my production up, or else I will never be able to pump again for instances when he needs milk to be put to bed or if I am away a longer time. He loves to drink my milk when he is at home. The home is his home, his space. A space he knows and has grown with alongside my breastmilk.
Coda: It took three weeks but now S drinks anywhere between 3-6 oz at daycare; the paltry amount I am able to pump in the day. It takes between 30-60 minutes of my day to pump milk, to make an extra lunch on top of a lunch. I sit pressing down on my breast while the pump suctions the milk out of out my nipple watching a film or one of the several Sally Wainwright tv shows, angry that this is the kind of free labour that is care work that is unacknowledged and mostly unappreciated. I have no access to my hands while I pump, I also need to relax and be mostly passive to get the most milk. When people laud that one of the benefits of breastmilk is that it is free do not (need to) understand how living as a working mother functions.