I'm not sure what started it. One minute I was in the midst of my grooming routine and thinking in a sort of mater-of-fact way that I definitely want to see a lactation consultant before I try to breastfeed another baby (whenever that may be). The next minute I was choking back tears, remembering how hard I tried to nurse Monica, how emotionally crushing it was when she pulled away and screamed, how incompetent I felt those first six months, how waves of dread overwhelmed me each time she started showing signs of hunger.
I always expected to nurse my children. But expectation and reality failed to align. A perfect storm of an early birth, several days in NICU, and a trans-continental move derailed breastfeeding from the start. I tried practically everything, saw multiple professionals, had Monica's tongue-ties cut, and even took her to a chiropractor to address her neck pain. Still, we ended up using a syringe and then a Haberman feeder. Feeding time was never a bonding time. It was a battle; she screamed and I tried desperately to get enough food down her, sometimes for seven hours a day. After months of struggle, we took Monica to a speech therapist and learned that Monica has both sensory issues with her mouth and motor control difficulties with her swallowing muscles. There was a very good reason she was struggling to eat enough.
I don't blame myself anymore that breastfeeding did not work for Monica. Rhombencephalosynapsis is the culprit, not me. But that doesn't change the fact that I am sad that I couldn't feed her from my body. Monica is still alive, and I am sometimes amazed that she didn't fail to thrive, despite the fact that we rarely reached the minimum suggested daily food intake.
I realized when I started crying that day that I had never really mourned the fact that breastfeeding didn't work for Monica. In the midst of our struggles, I prayed repeatedly that she would somehow catch on, that I would find the miracle combination of stimuli and positioning that would get her to nurse. But after I decided to stop trying, I didn't deal with the grief of unmet expectations. I didn't tell God I was disappointed. I just moved on.
So that afternoon, after I put Monica down for her nap, I lay on my bed, and said, "Honestly, God, I'm disappointed that breastfeeding didn't work out."
And then I cried.
In the days that followed, I became more energetic. A sort of lightness made everything easier to do. Until it was gone, I did not realize what a weight that unmourned disappointment had been. I was so used to carrying it around that I didn't notice how heavy it was.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." I've always unconsciously added a few extra words to my interpretation of this verse. I've read it as "Blessed are those who have something to mourn" rather than simply "Blessed are those who mourn." To me, it was one of those verses specifically for those in the midst of some great sorrow. But perhaps it's applicable to everyone--maybe the line between being blessed or not blessed isn't drawn between those who experience loss and those who do not, but rather between those who mourn and those who do not. The human condition universally includes disappointment. All of us have cause to weep; but some of us--either intentionally or unintentionally--find ways to avoid mourning.
In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the protagonist has a splendid line about sleep, uttered just after he returns from murdering Duncan, the king of Scotland:
Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast. (2.2.35-40)
Sleep is a wonderful nourisher, and motherhood certainly doesn't include enough of it. But there is another sort of tiredness that sleep does not fix. There is the tiredness of carrying unwept emotional pain. When I struggled with depression, I often took long naps and blamed them on fatigue from teaching. While teaching is exhausting, my tendency to nap excessively was also a result of my failure to mourn disappointment. Sometimes, tiredness is simply a physical need for more sleep. But sometimes going to sleep is a misdirected and ineffective attempt to relieve a heaviness that is more than normal tiredness. No amount of slumber can lift the burden of a sorrow unmourned.
The beginning of real tranquility lies not in sleep, but in honesty. It starts with an admission of loss, with a prayer that goes something like, "Honestly, God, I'm disappointed," with a simple willingness to cry to the one who said:
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