TW: death, postpartum anxiety
I know a black one would have fit your aesthetic better, but the woman said they don’t use black for dairy.
Oh no we love this, I assure her. We had wanted a butter bell for a long time.
I linger on the custom though. She said that? That no one makes black things to hold dairy?
Yeah, she said it’s just not really done.
I guess it might look a bit like an urn in black, I wonder aloud, turning over its cool sides in my hands.
Did you know that breastmilk can be all different colours? I asked my husband, reading an article on La Leche League’s website. Obviously white and cream, but pink if there’s blood in it, green if you’re sick, orange if you’ve been eating a lot of carotene, blue if you eat foods with certain dyes.
We had mentioned getting a ring made from my breastmilk. I liked the look of a milky white stone, and a tactile reminder of my physical connection to my son felt saccharine in a way that I craved. I had been hungry for months while trying to make enough milk, and I salivated at the prospect of extra calories, even if only in the form of sentimentality. But I never had enough to spare.
I had recently stopped pumping, after ten long months. I’d felt a cold dread every time I shoved the pump parts together, flipped the stained pumping bra around my torso, figure-eighted the duckbills into the bra’s little horizontal slits, and pushed the buttons on the device that I hated, but so desperately needed.
However I’d grown fond of the post-pumping ritual: pouring one bottle into the other, and watching the milk waterfall and bubble to a volume that I hoped would amount to more than the sum of the two bottles’ parts. But it never did. 30 ml plus 40 ml was always 70. 35 ml plus 30 ml was always 65. I knew this.
Nevertheless, I pushed logic into abeyance each time, on the off chance that the universe wanted to use me for the smallest of tricks. But nothing ever materialized, and faced with not making enough, I felt each generation of evolution stack up behind me: seeing my volume fall short, the first one tipped forward, toppling each successive one on their way to ask me, Why?
I consoled myself with the fact that breastmilk’s fat content increases as infants get older. Over the last ten months, seeing the fat collect on the top layer of milk as I pulled it out of the fridge - miniature ice floes separating and knocking into one another in an opaque ocean - reminded me that my body’s reserves were being poured into my son's.
So imagine if you sent your pink breastmilk to be made into a ring, because it was tinged with blood. I recoiled, though I wasn’t sure why.
Yeah, that might be strange, he said, but maybe not. People get rings made out of their dead relatives’ ashes.
We were sure he was a girl. We had no reason to think so, but we did. The NIPT blood test would check for genetic conditions, and would also test for the baby’s sex.
How does it check for the sex? I asked.
It’s by the presence of the Y chromosome in your blood, my husband read from the company’s website.
In my blood? His Y chromosomes are floating around in my blood?
I learned that his fetal DNA will migrate into my body, in a process called fetomaternal transfer. I learned that fetomaternal cell transfer is uneven, in that more fetal DNA will flow from the baby to the mother, than from the mother to the baby. And I learned that my baby’s DNA will stay in my body for decades. The persistence of fetal cells in maternal tissues is called fetal microchimerism, and fetal DNA has been found in mothers’ brains, hearts, skin, and other internal organs.
I pictured my DNA tumbling into the two Ziploc sandwich bags that the funeral home had used to hold my mother’s ashes before packing them inside the urn.
I couldn't save him from nuclear winter. The article I was reading made it clear. I had concocted scenarios from which I felt certain I could save him, or at least try:
What if someone tried to steal him in public? I could attack them. I’d never attacked anyone, but I was certain I could let loose every primal instinct to wrench him back.
What if someone broke in? If I heard them in the house, I could shove the heavy wooden furniture in his room in front of the door and then jump out of the bedroom window with him. It was soft below. We might hit some tree roots or stumps, but I’d protect him with my body. I might break an ankle or wrist, but we could at least escape.
I had done the first part during an overseas vacation. The obliging hotel staff in a small European hotel had lent us a crib for his room, but the only place to fit the crib was in front of the door’s angle of opening. The keys to the rooms hung behind the desk in plain view. I couldn’t shake the image of two hands reaching in and stealing my baby while I slept soundly beside him. So after he and my husband were asleep, I got out of bed and slid the heavy night table in front of the door. We made it all the way out of the room and down to breakfast before my husband asked if I’d seriously moved the furniture in the night. I couldn’t tell if his delay was concern or gratitude.
But as I read the article on nuclear warfare, my powerlessness in the face of the detonation of a large nuke - even far away - emerged. The article foretold of ash filling the Earth’s atmosphere, blocking the sun’s rays. I stared at the ceiling, imagining the cloud forming, obliterating the sun. How much of a worldwide supply of wheat was there?
We could grow food indoors for a while, with artificial light and water. But at scale for the entire global population? I knew we couldn’t do that. Entire ecosystems would falter, and then fail. I had read The Road years back. Should I read it again? I had never thought of it as an instruction manual, so much as a meditation on the heartbreak of loving your child through your own futility.
If there is no sun and no food, then I couldn’t save him, I conceded. It’s only a matter of time if that happens. How would he die? I had asked a doctor how the brain tumours would stop my mom’s body from living. There are a few ways it could happen, she’d said. Once it came to pass, I’m not sure if her heart gave out, causing her brain to die from lack of oxygen, or if the tumours shut down her brain activity and, without the signal to continue, her heartbeat stopped. In any event, the two of them had run the whole race tandem, only to haggle at the finish line.
How does hunger kill a body? And in what order? Which bodies go first? Would he, by reason of his littleness, wither away before me? Perhaps I could make enough milk for him to survive. Perhaps evolution had imprinted famine onto the human genome, emitting markers into a mother’s blood that would allow her to alchemize her body for her child. Perhaps, upon reading the markers, my breastmilk would summon the far reaches of my flesh, in order to sustain him. Perhaps my milk could suck my blood, muscles, and sinew into itself, siphoning decades of accumulated nutrition into his body. I had watched the cartilage of my mother’s nose sharpen to a blade in the minutes after she died. If she could transform in death, couldn’t I? But when the milky broth of me was used up and my bones had offered their last drop, who would hug him?
His breathing whistled evenly beside me. He was on his back in a yellow onesie, zipped into his powder blue sleep sack. The growing light of dawn reflected on his turned cheek.
One thousand percent! I whisper yell into his neck. He erupts into giggles. He knows the routine. I ask, How much do I love you? and then hold him up in the air and answer, One thousand percent! 900 more than is possible Titi!
He kicks his feet and squeals with delight, and we swing around the front hall, his cool cheek pressed onto mine.
I will love you long after I’m dead! I swing and sing. And long after you’re dead too! And even after the universe is done existing - whenever that is! I pull him away to look into his face. Even when we’re both just ashes Titi, you’ll be with me.