By Grace Zhiwei Tan

Last week, in the late afternoon, I found myself wondering through Central Park with my husband and child.

The park was a beautiful, very large continuous expanse of greens, lakes and fences, lots of fences. The best part was having civilization on both sides of the green. I was excited to explore everything in the park, every little walk I could take, a path by the flowers – if there were flowers but I didn’t see any in the end – a path by the lake, with turtles bathing in the sunlight and Manhattan buildings as their backdrop. But as always, I was bound by time and my duty as a parent to keep the exploration short. Time, like parenthood, binds you only when you care about it. As you grow older, there is less time to be caring all the time, and you drop some cares. The liberation is unimaginable and surprising when it comes. A once important thing that would consume your mind with constant, endless, depressing thoughts becomes as weightless as milk powder in the wind.

I wish I had this benefit of hindsight while breastfeeding my child. Breastfeeding was the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do in my life, at the beginning. More difficult than exams, job interviews, presentations, appraisals. It’s nature, so you can’t control when the milk comes in, or how much there is.

After the confusion of childbirth and seeing my wonderful baby for the first time, the one thing I wanted to give her was the gift of my nipple oozing with fresh, nutritious, unadulterated milk. But then the milk doesn’t come, and I wait, one day, two days, three days, four days, five days! Something is wrong. It’s never coming! I panic, cry like mad, drive my husband crazy with my insecurities, and question my womanhood. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I be like the woman in the breastfeeding video with the large breasts filled full with lovely milk and her young infant suckling contently at her nipple. She looks radiant, her baby well-fed. I look bloated, my breasts beginning to sag. I wonder why.

My baby is looking plumper and plumper by the day, but not by my milk. It’s powder milk. My enemy. The reason my body thinks it’s OK to not produce milk, ‘cause there’s always a back-up in different brands & bases: soy, cow’s milk. There is a whole industry out there, just on milk production. It’s my fault. I work, get too stressed out at my job. I’m not the nurturing kind who lies in bed during pregnancy to sing to her baby or prepare for motherhood by reading all the baby books. My body isn’t ready, doesn’t know it’s time to stop working 9 to 9 as a banker. It’s time to be a mother.

On the 6^th day, I gave up waiting and started to force the milk out with a breast pump. It worked, miraculously. Milk did come out, just a little bit, but enough for me to declare to my husband, “my milk’s in!” I put my baby to my breast, and he cries, refusing to suckle. He has grown attached to the bottle in the last six days and has forgotten the breast.

I am helpless, unwanted, rejected, heartbroken and useless, all at once. He doesn’t want me.

Please try again, baby. It’s me, mummy. Now ready to feed you, to nourish you, to entertain you, to embrace your face.

He cries, again and again, each time I put him to me. I pray and cry, and almost go mad again.

Then it happens, in the morning. I put him to me, and he suckles. My breasts turning from hard to soft.