I don't know what my boobs ever did before I had babies. They were barely-a-B-cup, hardly-a-handful mounds of flesh that wondered why they, unlike toes or teeth or nostrils, had no obvious purpose.
Bored and bitter beneath the red polyester lace of the latest super-duper pushup bra, they searched for the meaning of their existence. Trips to Europe did little to help them find themselves. Underwires only underlined their pain.
Then came Juliet. My beautiful brunette valentine wailed her way into our world on Feb. 14, 2004. She was seven pounds of magic – and hunger. When Juliet was five minutes old, the nurse helped her latch that impossibly tiny pink mouth onto my left breast. And the revolution of wonder began.
It wasn't easy in the beginning. My boobs and I, shocked by the sudden reality of this tiny human, didn't know what to do. On that first, endless night, I struggled through my exhausted stupor to calm and feed Juliet. I didn't know my clumsy attempts at latching would lead to something the nurses so eloquently called "nipple trauma."
Ouch.
By the time we brought Juliet home, my boobs were blooming more spectacularly than orchids in the rainforest. After 35 years of flat-out frustration, they had morphed into massively magnificent milk factories, swollen with warm, sweet sustenance just for Juliet. My daughter melted my mammary malaise. All at once, my boobs had a job.
Page 1 of 2
