Symbiosis

The night before we leave for our Caribbean cruise, my husband Brian and I stand over our suitcase that is already looking like it will need to be sat upon in order to be zipped.

“I want to take the cooler,” I say.

It’s a flexible, decompressable cooler bag, large enough to hold a twelve-pack. But it isn’t for beer or Diet Coke. It’s for my breastmilk.

We have three kids—six, three, and five months—who are not coming with us on the cruise. It’s a grown-up getaway to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary and my thirtieth birthday. I’m thrilled to be getting a break, but separating a breastfeeding mother from her infant requires serious logistics.

We spent the months leading up to the cruise training the baby, Oliver, to take a bottle. One day Brian sent me away to run errands, determined to get Oliver to take accept the plastic nipple while I was gone. When I returned hours later, Oliver was still on a hunger strike. I couldn’t bear to watch him cry; my body literally ached to feed him. I cast a desperate look at Brian, who was still holding the now-cold bottle in his hand.

“Well, I can’t say no to both of you,” he said.

More weeks passed without bottle success. I thought we might have to cancel our trip. Then, just weeks before we were to leave, Oliver relented.

But breastfeeding is a symbiotic relationship. He needs me, and I need him. He removes milk and thereby maintains life, and I avoid explosion. (Anyone who has gone too many hours without nursing her baby is familiar with that swollen, tender, sometimes leaky phenomenon which I call “rock boobs.”) To address the explosion bit, I will be bringing my breast pump on the cruise. It is a large, round device, about the size of a cantaloupe, with a handle for carrying. Aside from Brian, this pump will be my constant companion.

Until this moment, standing over our overflowing suitcase, I had decided I would toss all my pumped milk down the drain. Transporting it, trying to keep it cold—it just seemed too complicated. But suddenly I can’t bear the thought of throwing it away. I imagine pouring my freshly pumped milk in the sink, still warm as it finds its way to who knows where with the rest of the sewage. This is food for my baby, a substance that is often referred to as liquid gold. And I’m going to spend a not-insignificant amount of time during my vacation pumping it.

“It’s a flexible cooler,” I say to Brian, who is looking skeptically at the suitcase.

We (Brian) manage to stuff the cooler into our suitcase, then I gather other necessary supplies—breastmilk storage bags, Ziplocs (sandwich and gallon size), and an insulated lunch bag. I squeeze all this, along with my pump and its accessories, into a backpack. There’s just enough room to spare for my book, phone, and sunglasses. We to go bed and I toss and turn until our alarm goes off at 4 a.m. I take sleepy Oliver out of his crib and nurse him one last time.

Around 8:30 a.m., we are thousands of feet above the earth somewhere between Boise and Houston. My breasts feel heavy and tight. Time for a feeding. At home, Oliver nurses about every three hours, with a longer stretch at night. I’d like to have more time between pumping sessions during the trip, but my body is indifferent to my travel plans.

I yank the pump from my backpack and set it on the tray intended to hold a two-count package of Biscoff cookies and meager cup of ginger ale. Then I pull the rest of the paraphernalia from my backpack—tubing, breast shield, backflow protector, valve, and bottle—and get everything connected. I can only imagine what any nosy onlookers think I am about to do.

Feeling conspicuous, I put on my nursing cover to give myself some privacy. I situate the breast shield over my nipple and press the button to start the pump. It makes a rhythmic, mechanical sound. With each thrum, my nipple gets sucked into the cone, stretching and straining as it is tugged on by an invisible force. With each artificial suck, tiny streams of milk flow out, and a few drops drip into the bottle. Nursing a baby can be tender and sweet, but pumping is akin to working on a dairy. As the cow. The wonder of the pump, though, is that it is not demanding. It does not cry. It does not go through the full cycle of digestion, making a mess in its diaper every couple of hours. But it is not nearly as cute as my baby.

As I pump, I massage my breasts, squeezing from the outer edges to make sure there are no lumps. A lump would indicate a blocked duct, a blocked duct could lead to mastitis (a condition which, oddly enough, I have only experienced as a non-lactating teenager; it was horribly painful), and mastitis would definitely put a damper on our vacation.

After the bottle is full—it’s four ounces, an amount which I could down in two gulps but would take my baby at least ten minutes and would satisfy him for hours—I carefully, oh so carefully, pour the milk from the bottle into the plastic storage bag. The saying “There’s no use crying over spilled milk” does not apply to breastmilk.

The flight attendant has brought drinks, and I tell Brian to save his ice so I can use it to keep the milk cold. I dump the ice from our cups into a sandwich size Ziploc, and put it in the insulated lunch bag with the milk.

Hours later at the hotel, I settle in for an uninterrupted night of sleep, but at 2 a.m. I realize there’s a puddle of milk in the bed and I feel like I’m going to pop. I hook myself up to the pump, which apparently is not as refined a parasite as my baby. I feel mastitis is eminent. I wonder if this trip was a good idea at all.

The next day I pack my lunch bag with the four full bags of breastmilk I now have. I am grateful that hotels have lots of free ice. After a one-and-a-half-hour bus ride, we arrive at the cruise port. We sweat and move slowly in line as employees in matching Hawaiian shirts direct us here and there. We approach a security checkpoint that looks more like one at a sporting event than the airport, and is manned by an employee who is also wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Fearful that my milk will set off the scanner and be taken from me, I tell him, “I have breastmilk in there.” He looks at me and says “okay” in a way that makes me realize he did not need to know this. Finally we arrive at our room, which will be home for the next seven days. I tuck my milk away in the mini fridge and sanitize my pumping equipment.

By the end of the first full day at sea, my breasts seem to have figured out their new production schedule. Mastitis has been abated, and I’m having a really good time. It feels foreign and ridiculously indulgent to lay under a shaded cabana for hours, reading a book and looking out at the ocean and eating all-inclusive soft serve and flatbread pizza. Uninterrupted.

But the one interruption I can’t ignore, my body won’t let me ignore, is the need to empty my breasts of milk. Every few hours they become full and tender and I return to our room, connect the tube, do five minutes on each side. I recently learned that the first priority of a breastfeeding mother’s body is to feed the baby, so it will pull whatever nutrients it needs for the milk from the mother’s body, even if it is to the detriment of the mother. (Ladies, take your vitamins!) I’m not bitter about this—who could I even blame? But it’s fascinating. My body is making a choice which I cannot override with my brain.

My body itself is a mother.

On the third day, we get off the boat to spend the day in Honduras. I load my backpack with the lunch bag, the pump, and a bag of ice. We spend the first half of the day ziplining through the jungle, putting our lives in the trust of carabeaners and cable. On the drive back to the port, I situate the pump on my lap and fill another bottle as the small tour bus lumbers around the windy streets of a Honduran village. Between flashes of palm trees and brightly painted stucco, I see a woman sitting in her doorway, her half naked toddler on the porch, looking as if they are just trying not to be hot. We get off the bus and go to the beach, where we meet a lifeguard who gives us a tip on the best snorkeling spot. He has lived on the island his whole life and was born on Christmas Day, just like my baby.

At the end of seven days, the mini fridge is full with 19 bags of white fluid which has separated into cream on top. I am beaming with pride—just look at all these adorable parcels of nourishment that my body made! I situate the bags of milk in my big cooler, then cover them with two gallon-size Ziploc bags of ice.

The bag is quite heavy.

I am prepared for the fact that getting through airport security will be the most difficult part of this whole proposition. I know that TSA is technically supposed to let passengers take breastmilk through, but I imagine most people have a bottle or two, not entire cooler.

At first, everything is routine. Show ticket and I.D. Remove shoes. Check pockets. Fill gray bins with my belongings. Then I heave my cooler onto the rollers. As it approaches the conveyer belt, I tell the TSA agent, “It’s breastmilk,” then giggle, even though it’s not funny. I watch my milk travel down the conveyer and disappear into the scanner. It emerges on the other side, and another TSA agent pulls it aside. I expected this.

“Is this your bag?” the agent asks.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s breastmilk.”

“We’re going to have to take a look at it over here,” she says. Still barefooted, I walk over to the inspection table. Where the special bags go.

The agent unzips the cooler, removes the ice, and pulls out one of the bags of milk. She seems uncertain what to do with it. After turning it in her hand a few times, she wipes the condensation with a tissue and calls to a male coworker. He comes over and they discuss the contents of the cooler. We are separated by a panel of plexiglass, and I only catch part of their conversation.

“It’s not recommended,” the man says.

I don’t know what he means by this. I begin to seriously doubt that they will let me take this milk on the plane. This milk that will feed my baby. During a formula shortage. I generally try to cut the TSA a little slack—it seems like a thankless job in which one often has to deal with cranky, sleep-deprived, spandex-clad people—but this…

The two agents speak a moment more in hushed tones. The woman then turns to me and says, “Ma’am, we’re going to have to do a full-body pat down. ‘Cause you’ve got a lot of breastmilk.”

I accept this verdict. Of course I accept it. I have not come this far for my milk to be thrown out with the four-ounce remains of Diet Coke and renegade pairs of nail clippers.

The female agent explains the pat-down procedure. She tells me each part of my body she will be touching, using vague hand motions to indicate the manner of touching. Then she asks me if I want to do this in private or right here in the open. I’m not sure why I make the decision—maybe because I have a chronic inclination to avoid being an inconvenience, or maybe it’s because I want to keep an eye on my milk—but I tell her to go ahead and do it right here.

The pat-down begins. The woman is kind and conversational, I’m sure in an effort to minimize the awkwardness of the situation. As she runs her hand down my inner thigh, she asks me how old my baby is. “Five months,” I say. “I’ve been away from him for a week, on a cruise with my husband. That’s why there’s so much milk. I wanted to try to save it.”

“Of course!” she says. “You’ve got to! That is the best milk!”

I’m surprised by her enthusiasm, since she and the other agent seemed skeptical when they were inspecting my cooler. This seems like a good sign.

Several feet away, my milk is being investigated. I’m proud that I’ve produced enough to warrant the attention of three TSA agents. I’m a bona fide threat to homeland security. One bag of milk goes in a small scanner with a red light. I watch as the agents handle the other 18 bags of milk and divide them between two gray bins, the ones in which other passengers place their shoes and belts and cell phones. Somehow this feels more like a violation than the full-body pat-down. The milk in the bins is taken somewhere; I lose track of it when I turn to my husband, who is waiting on a bench nearby.

“This is a riot!” I say and laugh, as the agent swipes her fingers just under my breasts.

Finally the ordeal is over and the milk, determined not to contain any explosives, is returned to me. I anxiously tuck it back in the cooler and cover it with the bags of ice. I can’t believe I’ve pulled this off.

Hours later, we finally arrive home. Oliver is crying, and I take him and nurse him on my bed. I hold his warm little body against me and stroke his fuzzy head. His sucks are silent, but I hear a quiet kah when he swallows. His tiny, perfect lips are latched on tightly, and they make a loud smack when he suddenly pulls off to look up at me and smile.

He needs me, and I need him. It’s a symbiotic relationship.