Thoughts on a Child
Erin Douglass
BottleJune 2007
She started off normally enough. Which is to say that she rejected the first ten or twenty bottles we dared wave before her tender lips. "No way," she mimed with furrowed baby brow. "I want the boob."
This response shouldn't have been surprising. For the first three months of her life I did nothing but present a warm, fleshy breast every time Roxy wailed. As she sucked and snoozed and then sucked some more, my heart beat close to her ear and all was well in the world.
And then, inexplicably, we were five days away from my return to work and Roxy's daycare debut. According to the books, that meant we had a freezer full of breastmilk and a bottle-ready child.
Well, we had a freezer. In the corner leaned three sorry pouches of milk — mere ounces each — a far cry from the gallons I should have pumped in preparation for my re-entry into the working world as a lactating mother.
Worse, our bottle-ready child was a fiction. I'd tried half-heartedly to get Roxy to drink from the plastic nipple. She would have none of it. Jon gave it a go several times when I dared leave home for more than an hour. Roxy got so upset they had to drive up and down Highway 2 until she fell asleep, baffled and exhausted.
Thus, it was with some trepidation that we brought Roxy to Kids Klub for Day One. She's such a good child, we assured her teacher, Mrs. Martha, a congenial Armenian with a robust, R-rich accent. Yes, very well socialized. So happy to be held by others. Truly, a joy.
"And the bottle?" asked Mrs. Martha. "She's taking it without trrrouble?"
Jon and I stared at our infant-room-compliant stocking feet.
Mrs. Martha raised her eyebrows.
Sighing, she warned us that some children never accept the bottle once they've reached this age (three months). We felt worried, unfit. What if our daughter was one of those few? A bottle refusnik? It was too awful to consider.
When we fetched her hours later, we found a happy, alert child. "So she did it?" we asked eagerly. Mrs. Martha smiled. "It took some doing," she said. "But eventually she drank from the bottle."
We were elated.
"Go home and practice!" she pressed, handing us Roxy's blanket.
We did practice and sure enough, Roxy started to take a bottle not only from Jon, but from Jon in my presence and then, eventually, from me, The Boob Owner herself.
The store of breastmilk, however, never quite materialized.
Oh, I tried. I pumped in the morning between meetings. I pumped at lunch. I pumped in the afternoon when others were grabbing coffee. At first it felt like a welcome break from the hectic pace of my days. But soon I started to feel antsy in the "Mother's Room" — a windowless closet off the bathroom complete with mini fridge and humorless, depressing copies of Motherhood magazine.
Mrs. Martha caught on in no time. "Ay-rin," she said one morning as I dropped Roxy off. "I need to talk to you about the brrreastmilk." Despite her serious tone, Mrs. Martha made breastmilk sound like something I'd want two of in a fine restaurant.
"Roxy has a very good appetite," she said, smiling. "But soon we will run out of the brrreastmilk. We suggest supplementing with the formula."
Formula? The "F" word of early childhood nutrition and development?
What a grand idea.
We spent the next nine months scooping the overpriced powder into bottles at home and on the go. Roxy sucked the liquid down without complaint.
And those bottles? Never a problem again.
These days, we hand her bottles filled with watered-down juice, 2% milk, even horchata. She'll take the vessel, lock the nipple between her lips and throw her head back, as if slaking a thirst only babies could know.