Breast Milk Meditation

New mothers are faced with a lot of expected and unexpected challenges. Breastfeeding can be both. Now you have read about this and got the equipment, cream and the lactation cookies, you’re ready to go, right?? Many mothers find breastfeeding hard. This is because it is hard.  Everyone involved is learning a new skill…sometimes your body is just not responding, the baby just won’t latch, stay latched, and the list goes on and on.

Take my situation; my beautiful daughter was born six weeks early and could not go directly to breastfeeding. But as all of you prepared mothers know, if you don’t use it you lose it. My wonderful lactation specialist told me to pump eight or more times each day and relax in order to keep my milk. (Relax?!? Are you kidding?!) At first, with no baby to simulate this was very difficult and sad. Not the experience I was hoping for. Sitting, wishing I could hold a baby instead of a machine. In the wee hours of the morning, during the first week of my baby’s life, I woke to an alarm so I could pump with my baby miles away; this meditation came to me. It helped me and I hope it can help more mothers who choose to breastfeed.  

The earth was spinning around and the universe was turning all very fast, time was moving, I watched as if from stadium seating. As I slowly moved closer to the earth things slowed until I was standing next to a mountain stream. Time stood still. I headed to the sun, to the top of the mountain without thinking about it. As I walked the shores at a leisurely pace I found I was walking through frozen time and every ten yards or so I would watch a scene play out on the river. The scene would pause the moment the players interacted with the water. A doe and her fawn lowering their heads for a sip, a Neanderthal family drinking, a bear catching fish alongside men that seemed to flicker through history. Women collecting plants, setting traps. Play of all ages, kids catching frogs and swimming. People always flicking through time, like an old move reel. It must have taken most of the day, this journey because now nearing the top of the mountain the sun is at my back. Soon dusk would be upon me. At the top, I see a great rock that is bubbling, gurgling, pushing from deep within the earth this freshwater stream. A few yards above the trees but not quite to the babbling stone, I turn and see the valley before me flick through time, transforming with the appearance of the freshwater. Life burst forth. I see the valley replenished time and time again with the setting sun glinting off the water. I watch until the sun sets and with the last ray of sunshine. I gently fly backward into space, but as I do I see the sun glint off the water. I see the water’s whole journey from the babbling stone back to the sea joining other rivers and feeding lakes along the way. As I continued to fly back in space to where I started I felt these words from the Goddess; “your body is as mine, your aquifers have vast and replenishing resources, your river flows into the rivers that are your baby’s veins, the lake that is her belly and the endless sea, that is her mind.” Now I could see the earth spinning along with the rest of the planets. This is how it has been for a long time, I could trust my body to do this for me. 

In my own body again. I could feel the movement and warmth provided by the sun in my breasts. As I looked inward I could see the orange reflection of the fading sun as it was on the river turn instantly pearl white. Moving up and out to fill my child.

I was able to provide more than enough milk for the entire time I wanted to breastfeed. This is in no way the only thing I did to get/keep milk going, but I believed it helped. Every time I found it hard to let the milk down because of stress or whatever I would walk the river again and see the endless cycle that is Mother milk.