The knock on the door and the wiggling of the knob I recognized as my mother Mary's signature arrival sounds. Perhaps inadvertantly she was giving me a heads up that she was there, and I knew she had her key in hand as less than a second later, I heard the sound of the key in the lock.
"Hello Mother," I said as she intruded on the living room. I didn't bother to get up or change what I was doing: feeding my baby. Still just dressed in my robe, I had my son snuggled in my arm suckling on my nipple.
"Oh my God, Joy, he's so beautiful!" my mother exclaimed as she stepped into the room, pushing the door closed behind her, and not even acknowledging me. Walking right up, barely even glancing at me, she reached out and ruffled the fine silky hair on my firstborn son's head. "You and Gary make beautiful grandbabies," she finally said, leaning down to kiss me. I looked up, my lips meeting hers in a motherly hello kiss.
"How are you doing? Can I get you something?" She asked the same two questions that she asked every time she came over.
"Can you get me a drink of water? I forgot my water bottle before I sat down."
"Oh sure," she answered, stepping to the kitchen where I heard her find and refill the water bottle that seemed to go with me everywhere anymore.
Sensing that Sean David, named after his grandfathers, had emptied my breast I slipped him over in my arms, pulled back my robe, and guided him to my other nipple. He didn't find and latch on at first, and despite that my normally rather small breasts had grown immensely in the last few weeks, I still had to help. Spreading my fingers, I pressed against my breast so that my nipple seemed to extend further and guided Sean's mouth to me. Now able to find it better his mouth latched on easily, the tingle that I'd come to expect in my clit when he did, showing up right on time.
I hadn't yet gotten used to this: the feeling of arousal that I got when my husband was sucking on my nipples also showing up when my son was doing the same. I knew that I was often wet by the time I'd finished nursing him, but so far had managed to refrain from touching myself. My husband, on the other hand, had been rewarded with an aroused and wet wife after feeding my baby several times. After not being able to fuck in any position except cowgirl or doggie for the final month of our pregnancy, it was again nice to be able to spread my legs and let him again take me face-to-face, although he didn't seem to mind at all when I climbed back into bed, and onto him, at 2 am.
I hadn't yet commented to my husband about just using his hands on my breasts. The first time he'd tried to use his mouth or tongue on me he'd pulled away in surprise as I leaked milk into his mouth. "I didn't even suck," he'd sputtered as he pulled away. I assured him he didn't have to, the pressure in my breasts was like water behind the dam, just waiting to burst through.
~
"Are you going to cover up?" Mom said as she pulled up the chair across from me.
"I will when I'm done," I answered.
The order of how I arranged my clothes and covered myself in the privacy of my own home was seemingly of no consequence to me. Sure, I'd had a blanket and covered myself as I'd fed Sean when we'd gone out in public, but in my own front room? I wasn't bashful. If she hadn't been there, what difference did it make whether I left my robe open with my breasts exposed or even if I just fed him totally naked like I often did at night? I'd rapidly returned to sleeping naked as my body returned to its pre-pregnancy form, or at least sleeping naked from my breasts down as I needed a nursing bra and pads to keep me from getting the bed wet at night between feedings. It wasn't unusual for me to get up in the middle of the night, take my bra off, and just feed him naked where I could easily shift him from boob to boob without having to worry about clothes.
"You probably don't want to let your father see you like that," she added. I didn't say anything.
"How's your milk supply?" she asked, "Is he getting enough?"
"I think so, but man, he seems to be hungry all the time. It sometimes seems as soon as he's done, and I put him down he wakes up hungry again."
She nodded knowingly. "Are you sure you're producing enough? I know when I had you, we had problems."
"You did? I never heard that."
She shrugged. "It wasn't anything I ever talked about with you. And to make it worse, you were allergic to formula."
"Oh my God," I said, shifting and snuggling Sean a little closer, "What happened?"
"It was a combination of things, but basically you weren't latching on properly. Later we found you had a tongue tie, you couldn't get your tongue to work properly, and the less you sucked, the less milk I was producing. You were getting hungrier and hungrier, and before they diagnosed your tongue-tie, they thought it was my problem and recommended we try a wet nurse."
I'd heard the term wet nurse before but hadn't ever thought about what it meant. "A wet nurse? What's a wet nurse?" I asked, realizing at that moment that Sean was currently satisfied. His mouth was still on my breast, my nipple in his mouth, but I recognized he was now just pacifying and falling asleep. When he was just pacifying, playing with my nipple in his mouth without sucking, just as his daddy had done with me so many times, if anything, it increased the tingle in my clit. I know I tried not to show my physical response to my mother.
Occasionally his little mouth would move, and he'd suck some more, but I knew within minutes I could put him down and he'd sleep -- until he was hungry again.
"A wet nurse is a nurse or helper who can breastfeed your baby for you."
"What? Someone else feed my baby? But don't you have to have a baby to have done that?"
"Yes, usually, but it doesn't have to have been very recent. Most women can produce enough milk for multiple babies. Lots of times, mothers of twins can feed them both at the same time, but sometimes they have to stagger feedings. But what do you do if you have triplets, quadruplets, or more? You've still only got two breasts. I know it's a lot less common today, but before the 20th century, particularly in elite societies, those who could afford it would hire women to breastfeed their babies."
"And you did that?"