Remember When…

Dear body,

Remember when we were in intensive care, recovering from surgery, and you had to teach the nurses how to pump breastmilk?

Remember when we had to absorb the breastmilk into towels because your baby couldn’t drink the drug-concentrated milk, and we couldn’t sit up due to the 20 staples down your abdomen?

Remember when you were pumping in a NYC ER just three weeks postpartum?

Remember when you had to wake up every 2–3 hours to pump and burned so many calories while on a liquid and soft-food, low-fat diet?

Remember how you didn’t have to pump, but pumping gave you a sense of normalcy while entering the season of motherhood and being a cancer patient, so you did it anyway?

Remember when you even continued to make breastmilk despite the trauma you were enduring?

Remember when you got to rest in a private hospital room instead of sharing with three other people because you were a breastfeeding mom?

Remember when you cried feeding your baby the last breastmilk bottle because chemo was starting?

Body, may you always remember to remember–remember how incredible it was that you could feed and nourish your newborn while fighting cancer.

Body, thank you for the gift you gave me and my baby when it felt like you were betraying me. May I always remember the beauty of my body during some of the ugliest days of my life.