By Hibisca Kimura
@hibisca.kimura

The first time I cried over spilled milk, I was 31 years old.

I was really angry. Bitterly angry. And one month postpartum. It was probably irrational (as bitter anger usually is), but it also felt completely justified (as bitter anger usually is). My husband stood in the kitchen, holding two ounces of breastmilk in a newly sanitized bottle over the sink. His face was apologetic, but it also said, You know this is the only option. 

In my head, I was yelling, What do you mean, the milk is contaminated? How did you drop the bottle in the hot water bath? How could you let this happen? My face was rigid, trying to hide the guttural response welling up. 

Do you know how much that is worth? What if this is all the milk I am able to make? What if my supply is terrible? Every single drop is precious. All the moms on all the online forums could back me up on this. They would go to war over these two ounces.

The cold silence hung in the air between us.

I should go to war over these two ounces, right?

“Fine.”

As the liquid gold spilled over the rim and disappeared beyond my view, I left the room and sobbed. 

***

The internet is a funny place. It contains all the information you could ever want to know. You can search: Why do you need to build up a freezer stash of breastmilk? How do you organize a freezer stash? Articles give you advice on possibilities your mind had never even considered. Make sure the lids on the storage bottles are tight, or you could end up with all of your pumped milk leaking into your cooler bag on the way home! The internet can inspire:  We made it to one year! I read. I wrote this note in Sharpie on the bag: “This is my last bag for you, baby. It has been a privilege to pump milk for you for a whole year. Happy 1st birthday.” The internet can also seep anxiety into your heart. We had a power outage last night—is my frozen milk still okay? Or We didn’t close the freezer door all the way, and my entire freezer stash is ruined.

The internet was also where I found, many months after the spilled milk incident, a way to donate part of my freezer stash that had overrun the frozen vegetables like the ivy on the side of my house. I have 150 oz of milk to donate, I type into the local Breastfeeding Mommies Facebook group. Would anyone be interested? The expiration date had snuck up on me. The pumped milk from Thanksgiving was coming up on six months, and Mother’s Day seemed as fitting a time as any to meet another mother’s need while making room in my freezer for adult ice cream. Living under the circumstances of COVID-19, I arranged a simple no-contact pick-up with a local mom.

When she texted me to say she was ten minutes away, I had a sudden moment of inspiration to include a hand-written card with the milk.  It must have been God-inspired, because for me, writing cards has never been the effortless task it seems to be for others. A simple thank-you card for a baby shower gift (mandatory, under societal norms) will easily take me fifteen minutes as I mull over every word. Does that sound too forced? Do I really need to exude that much excitement over a pack of diapers? How do I make “Thanks!” cover the entire inside of the card? To write an unprompted card under ten minutes (eight, after finding stationary and a suitable pen) was pushing my luck. But there was a strong, quiet voice reminding me that even the smallest words of encouragement could soothe an anxious mother’s heart.

Just wanted to send you my best wishes along with this milk. I know being a mama is hard, and it sounds like breastfeeding has been even more difficult. Just know you’re doing a great job. Happy Mother’s Day!

Ten minutes later, after I had carefully placed the box of milk halfway down my walkway and waved a brief “hello” to the woman from a distance, I closed my front door and immediately went to open my freezer door. The empty space was heavy with complexity. 

The overwhelming emotion was relief— the milk wasn’t going to go to waste, it wasn’t going to get dumped out from being expired, and my hard work wasn’t fruitless. A close second was the feeling of happiness in helping someone else. 

But as I stared at the empty space, a small sadness started growing. The cavity in my freezer mirrored the one suddenly inside of me. And then there was a crazy desire to track the milk. I wanted to follow up with this other mom and ask, Did your baby take it well? And then ask in another week, Things still going well?  Were you able to find the earliest dated bag out of the three Ziplocs that I already organized chronologically? Did you see that I labeled every bag with “Zoe” even though there are no other babies in the house and now there is this chunk of me that has left my freezer and my home?

The pragmatic, Asian side of me rolls her eyes at this dramatic scene. Growing up, I was taught not to express certain emotions—this is the stereotypical Asian norm. I vividly remember multiple occasions of standing in front of my dad with tears streaming down my face, him ordering me to stop crying, me wrestling with myself internally to control it. We also don’t say “I love you”. It is just understood, shown through actions—husband to wife, parents to children. Why do we need to say it? You know it’s true. We take care of you, provide for you, feed you food. Our parents didn’t say it to us, and so we just aren’t used to saying it.

I think of my mom especially, who placed meal after meal in front of me, who dropped off homemade food for me in college, who even now comes into my house bringing groceries and then cooks for me, whether I’m hungry or not. Out of all the meals she has prepared, I cannot imagine my mom stopping to ponder her work as a great sacrifice. Surely she just focused on what needed to be done and moved on to the next task. Open freezer, close freezer. Feed her family, feed her children—showing her love through her actions, without any expectation of verbal acknowledgement.

The bags of milk that I gave away—I know it’s just milk. It was what was needed to feed my baby, or in this case, to feed another baby. I know it’s probably just the beginning of countless instances where I will spend my time and my energy preparing food for my daughter, who may or may not even end up eating it.

In some ways, this milk wasn’t that big of a sacrifice on my part. Yes, there were crazy logistics of pumping at work, an inflexible schedule that required me kicking my high school students out of my classroom, and hours cleaning pump parts late at night. But my supply was good, and I wasn’t overwhelmed by anxiety. I was fortunate to not share the story of many other moms who were fighting to give breastmilk for a year even if they were only pumping an ounce at a time.

So if I concede that my experience was not wrought with difficulty, am I over-glorifying my own hours and energy spent pumping and storing up milk? Have I developed a martyrdom because I’ve read too many blog posts, felt the pressure to exclusively breastfeed, and seen the honest confessions from struggling moms? Yes, breastfeeding is so hard. Yes, pumping is so hard. Yes, feeding your baby is just so hard. Have I projected their difficulties onto myself? Have others done the same, to the point where we have all over-glorified a mother’s work as sacrifice? This is all so hard.

But no.

Surely a mother’s work is a sacrifice, regardless of degree, and whether or not it is voiced. Perhaps that feeling of sacrifice has always been prevalent, but my mother’s generation was just lonely in the experience, without the avenues of blogs and social media. It seems like they just did their work and moved on. Does that mean I am a weaker mom than the previous generation? Have I inherited the belief from my Asian upbringing that lack of emotion equals strength? 

I wrestle with myself in front of my open freezer—trying to decide whether or not I should feel a loss in this moment. I make a choice. I choose to acknowledge producing that much milk was a sacrifice and this should feel momentous. I don’t want to gloss over this so fast that I never recognize it for what it is. I hear it’s healthy to express some emotions once in a while. Years of learned behavior have suppressed many tears, but now I nudge them toward the surface. After all, I did give away 150 ounces of milk.

And sometimes milk is worth crying over.

Guest essay written by Hibisca Kimura. Hibisca is a high school math teacher and a mom to one. She enjoys many things nerdy, including board games, puzzles, and spreadsheets. Food is one of her love languages.

Photo by Lottie Caiella.