The Mama Body

How does my body know to wake up moments before Carter begins to fuss for his middle-of-the-night feeding? It doesn't happen every night; often I hear the "nyah, nyah, nyah"s in my dreams and am halfway down the hall before I become conscious. But just as often I wake, fully, and hear nothing. Check the clock. Decide to visit the bathroom - quietly and without flushing so as not to wake the children. Pause by the door and listen into the monitor ... do I hear him? Will he stir? He might as well since I'm already up ... Nothing. Pad back to bed. Sip water. Must have just had to pee. Ahhhhhhh ... settle comfortably back into the pillow. And that is when the "nyah, nyah, nyah"s begin.

Maybe it's not my body that knows my baby will momentarily need me. At least not my regular, non-nursing, all-mine-and-no-one-else's body. It's this mommy body that appears when I am pregnant and stays and lactates for me while I am nursing. My hum-drum, conservative, straightforward body becomes a liberal, crunchy, earth mother body that knows and responds to things far beyond the reaches of mere brain power. It's not something that's easy to discuss or compare notes on with your spouse (because he's doubtless asleep through the whole thing, not one to need 3AM potty breaks or to hear the "nyah nyah"s before they become wails). And it's less taxing for a tired mom to shrug off this so-called phenomenon as a sleepy delusion that's forgotten well before morning, probably by the time you trudge carefully back down the hall to pray for a quick return to deep sleep before the alarm goes off.

But I know that it's true. That I'm woken by a deep down pull that must be residual tugging from the umbilical cord. We are still attached, this nursing baby and me. And I miss that attachment with Tucker. Though his cord still tugs me more often than I realize. When I hear him calling for me in the night while I'm tending to Carter, and I know he hasn't heard me moving around - he's still sleeping. But his baby body knows Mama is just there and wakes him moments before he needs me.