A confession to you, my nursing daughter

Christ, like you, came into the world by a womb. The God who made heaven and earth came as one of the least of these, harbored in the body of the woman who became God’s mother. There is no room which can contain God, but God entered the uterus, the smallest room anyone ever inhabits. Mary’s hospitable yes drew the uncontainable God into the world, and her swollen belly became the first glimpse of Christ, the human-God.

Like the Christ-babe, like all babies, you eventually left the womb. No longer swimming in my body, you have become a land creature, like me and separate from me. When you were in my womb, my body bore the burden of care without waiting for or requiring my consent. Only in rather minimal ways did I willingly participate: avoiding scotch, eating well, submitting to medical care. My body provided all your material needs.

In birth, my body is relieved of some of its burdens, and I learn new ways of nurturing your life. It is a shift for you, no doubt. It is also a huge shift for me. Margaret Mead once wrote, “The mother who must learn that the infant who was but an hour ago a part of her own body is now a different individual, with its own hungers and its own needs, and that if she listens to her own body to interpret the child, the child will die, is schooled in an irreplaceable school.” I am being schooled in the irreplaceable school of your separateness. My hunger is no longer your hunger. I learn to tend to you—to know your cries, your expressions, your squirms. Through our separateness, I learn attunement to you.