It was an emotional two days in my LC class this week. Pregnancy and death, sickness and health, normalcy and pathology, jokes and tears. And in the midst of it, a mama nursing, a child playing, a baby napping.
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The way I’d imagined it, I would have my first baby while I was in grad school, as a couple of other friends had done. It was a welcoming department, and I planned to be be the kind of mom who brought my baby to class or a lecture, nursed as needed, rocked and swayed, took notes and asked questions. Life would go on, I imagined, not unchanged but certainly enriched.
I don’t for a moment regret my alternative. There are platitudes for this sort of thing – everything happens for a reason, maybe, or something about doors and windows. Whatever the phrase, I know this: I would not be where I am, on the path I’ve chosen, without the history I’ve had. It didn’t turn out as I’d planned – I couldn’t manage the logistics of bringing two babies to a lecture (I could barely manage to get two babies to their doctors’ visits!) and I didn’t do much nursing in public – but it turned out to be life changing in ways I could never have imagined.
And yet, it’s hard to let go of that fantasy of myself, rocking a baby in a classroom somewhere.
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It was an emotional two days, to be sure. And the napping baby? I rocked him and rubbed his back, stroked his head and soothed him to sleep, looked over his head and shared a smile with his mama, then sat in the darkness in the classroom with him and took notes and asked questions as life went on.