I Am His Mother: Breastfeeding as healing.

I'm on the couch, my son sleeping on my bare chest, my tank top splotchy with breast milk that’s leaked and dried. The living room is quiet, filtered with soft afternoon light. A breastfeeding pillow still rests across my lap from his last feed. My breakfast plate sits empty on the side table beside a half-finished cup of coffee and an empty water bottle — I never imagined being this thirsty while breastfeeding.

It’s a few weeks postpartum, and I’m soaking in the feeling of his tiny weight against my skin, the steady rise and fall of his breath. Then, this thought slips in — just a whisper: I know he’s mine... but something in me doesn’t feel like it’s true.

It passes like a breeze. I don’t say it out loud. I just hold him closer, maybe instinctively — unconsciously hoping that if I stay here long enough, holding him like this, that quiet part of me will finally catch up to the truth.

Three weeks earlier — and thirteen years ago today — I stepped onto the slippery slope of labor and birth intervention. I woke with the feeling that something was up. At the hospital, an assessment revealed amniotic fluid leaking and a positive GBS result on file. And then it began: IV antibiotics... induction with Pitocin... membrane sweep (before which the medical resident casually said, “If this doesn’t hurt, I’m not doing it right” — that’s a story for another time)... intense, unrelenting contractions... epidural... fetal heart rate deceleration... Cesarean.

It was the complete opposite of what I had prepared for.

Amidst the interventions, I used every comfort measure and emotional tool I had gathered — but with each medical decision, I had to grieve what was being lost. I released the birth I had envisioned — again and again.

As a naturopathic doctor, I knew that breastfeeding was at the center of what I wanted for myself and my baby. We had lots of challenges early on: intense engorgement, sore nipples, the relentless rhythm of every-two-hour feeds. But I was determined. And with the right support, we kept going.

Even so, I found myself getting swept up in the noise — the books, the blogs, the unsolicited advice and questions: Is he a good baby? Does he sleep through the night? Didn’t he just feed? When are you going to stop breastfeeding?

I read too much. I questioned everything. My mind was drowning in a sea of doubt and the pressure to "get it right".

A few months into motherhood, I found myself in deep conversation with a friend — the kind of friend who always goes beneath the surface. That’s when I finally said it out loud: I know he’s mine... but something in me still doesn’t believe it.

And I realized: because I hadn’t had the embodied experience of moving him through the birth canal — because the surgical curtain in the operating room had blocked my view, and the anesthesia had dulled all sensation — my body hadn’t felt him arrive. My mind knew he was mine but my body... didn’t get the memo.

She reminded me of the breathing and meditation practices I had once relied on. When I got home, I dusted off my clay finger labyrinth. I opened my journal.

And slowly, a shift began. A new awareness arose: breastfeeding had become the one space where I stopped looking outside myself for answers. It was just me and him. His body against mine. His eyes meeting mine. My body saying: I’ve got you.

I started showing up with more presence, a few minutes at a time. In the quiet moments as I rocked him to sleep, I breathed more slowly and deeply. I sang. I turned my attention to my heart and asked, "What do we really need in this moment?".

Despite the persistent influences — formula samples in the mail, sleep training culture around me, healthcare providers encouraging weaning, the sideways glances and the “You’re still doing that?” comments — we continued. Because something deep inside me knew: this matters.

Years later, while studying trauma, nervous system healing, and embodiment practices, I saw it clearly: breastfeeding had repaired that early rupture.

I didn’t know in those early weeks and months that breastfeeding would become my path to healing. That in the exhaustion and the commitment, I would grow a truth deeper than any book could offer. That I would come to feel — not just know — in every cell of my body: I am his mother.

This is why I care so deeply about breastfeeding. And why I’m so committed to supporting mothers. Because I know — in my bones — that when we protect a mother’s capacity to choose her feeding journey, and surround her with support instead of pressure, we protect something sacred.

And this is why it breaks my heart — and lights a fire in my belly — when I see systems and businesses that undermine breastfeeding, that lead mothers away from their instincts, away from their bodies, away from their wisdom.

A postpartum mother, a mother struggling with breastfeeding is vulnerable. Vulnerable to marketing, to poor advice, to the comments of others — family, friends, healthcare providers, and strangers alike. And when that happens, it can pull her out of her body — away from the place where her deepest truth lives.

And I want her to know: Your body holds the wisdom you’re searching for. You are enough. You are their mother.