For the Love of Boobs

I miss my boobs, although they haven’t gone anywhere. At least not anywhere exciting. They go into my daughter’s mouth all the time, and although that sounds wrong, she’s two-and-a-half months old and exclusively breastfed. So, really, it’s quite alright.

Truth is, before I got pregnant, I was never thrilled with the way my breasts hung. I always sort of hated my areola, large and light pink, and un-pastie-able, meaning they couldn’t be covered (at least not by the types of pasties you could buy in one of them fancy sex stores).

It’s funny how pregnancy can change everything, including the color of said areola. Before I grew another human being in my uterus, my areola were barely visible and my breasts were an average B cup, but during my third trimester my breasts doubled in size, and those light pink areola became the color of salami. Not only did they look different, but even before I gave birth, my boobs didn’t feel like they were mine anymore. Call it foreshadowing, or call it nature’s way of telling you to let go of your breasts, because my boobs: they don’t belong to me anymore. If you have a baby and you are able to breastfeed, your boobs won’t belong to you anymore either. In fact, this whole experience has me thinking about how we view breasts. They’re both sex objects and sustenance, depending on who you are and where you are in your life.

My nipples have never received so much action, and some days I need a “get-out-of-sucking-free card,” which is perhaps what pumping is for. When I pump, my partner can now feed our daughter. Still, pumping’s a whole other ordeal, and it puts into perspective the whole animal part of who we are. Hooked up to a machine as it milks my mammaries, I become part of a production line of one.

Don’t get me wrong, I love breastfeeding my daughter; it’s amazing to have her look up at me as she gets all her life’s nourishment from my source. And I choose to breastfeed, and as much as I do it for her, I’ve come to accept that I do it for me too. I love the bonding it affords and the time it allows me to still feel like my daughter and I have the connection we had when she was inside of me. Besides, I know I’m lucky that I’m able to breastfeed easily and without a lot of cracking and bleeding. Plus, I’m thankful that I still have my boobs, meaning I haven’t had to remove them for reasons like cancer or caution. But breastfeeding also means I might as well put police tape up around them suckers. And because my daughter has an all access pass to my breasts, my partner feels like he can’t go behind the velvet rope and grab hold of my honkers.

I suppose if my partner had a milk fetish this would be a different story. However, he says that touching my boobs makes him feel like he’s taking something away from our baby. It’s like he’s Robin Hood and he feels that playing with my breasts makes him Robin Boob, meaning that instead of stealing from the rich to give to the poor, he’s just stealing from our poor baby.

Sure, my boobs are getting enough stimulation, as in almost every hour of every day I have a little tongue flicking and sucking and squeezing all she can out of me. And while I appreciate that my boobs work for my daughter, her sucking on my breasts has definitely cramped my sex life.

I know that breasts are sexual, however I vaguely remember that my breasts are sexy too. Frankly, it’s hard to remember sex really, because now it’s mainly about sleep.

Still, when I do have sex, the fact that my nipples start to drip a white, sweet, milky substance while I bop up and down is a little more awkward than arousing. I hope we will learn to overlook the tiny tears of milky joy that drip down from my chest, and I know that this too shall pass — but right now it’s what I need to get past.

And maybe one day I’ll look at a glass of milk and feel nostalgic for what was. But for now, while I love being known as “Milk Bags,” I also wish I felt more like a MILF.