All Wet

I took my first shower of the week today. 

It's not what you think.  I've been doing alright with self-care in general.  It's not so hard when you never wear makeup.  But I get up in the morning and I put on a clean (if frumpy) outfit and I take walks and I have been cooking extra healthy to take care of my body and mind.  I don't exactly primp, but I do wash my hands and feet and dust my hair with dry shampoo to tame the morning mohawk. 

I would have loved to shower, to rub oil into my skin and rest in the warm torrents of water for far too long to be environmentally conscientious.  But it was just too damn hard.

Showers mean milk.  It is a cruel twist of biology that milk production does not depend on a living baby, only placental detachment and the hormonal surges that come with it.  All the crueler that you can get the baby blues from these hormones without actually having a baby.  I knew this was coming.  I donned a tight sports bra and counted the hours after the stillbirth in anticipation.  Right on schedule, the milk came flooding in and my mood shifted down.

Engorgement isn't being so full of milk that your breasts get hard.  It is an autoimmune response to the milk, the strange, foreign substance.  Your breasts swell up as though they had been bruised and battered.  It feels that way, too: like a beating. 

There's something about getting out of the shower, something about that draft of cool, humid air that lets the milk down with a sharp hormonal jolt from armpit to nipple.  I tried a cold shower, early on, thinking that icing the breasts helps decrease the swelling, so maybe cold water would be okay.  It was not okay.  I found myself dripping milk and blood and tears all over the bathroom floor, unsure what to do, how to stop the leaky flood.  How long to wait for it to stop on its own as I slowly, stickily undid all of my recent cleaning. 

It is excruciating, creating milk with no baby to feed.  That is where I feel my emotional wounds, on my breasts and in my body and soul when these hormones go surging and my body leaks its precious elixir for nobody but the tile floor.

I hadn't taken off my sports bra since that moment, only changed my outfit over it and changed the nursing pads under it. 

It took about three days to feel my milk dry up.  Not as bad as I had feared.  Today, I braved the shower again.  Elsie came along, too, to lighten the mood.  It was alright.  In fact, it was lovely.  I am clean and sweet and milk-free today.  I even gave up the pads and picked out a clean, more comfortable bra.  Happy birthday to me.