Blood and milk... endings and beginnings...
Moving into a new chapter in my postpartum journey. Honouring my blood, saying goodbye to my milk, tenderizing my heart...
Hello… I am Lauren, a Mother of two daughters, a Coach, Soulful Business Mentor, Writer, Creator, Sacred Space Holder and multi dimensional human being. I support those forever changed by Matrescence and the journey of Motherhood. Please do subscribe to join the journey…
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Hello friend
How are you feeling?
Today’s writing is straight from the heart.
It’s a little tender around the edges still, but ready to be shared. I know instinctively when an experience needs to be held within me still, and when it is ready to be set free. As things integrate - the words start to swirl in my mind and begin to find their way to ‘paper’ (or notes on my phone!) ready to be brought from inspiration, to form.
And so here are the words… in their rawest form…
The return
On the recent new moon I was awoken in the darkness - not by the baby like usual - but by the arrival of a familiar sensation in my body. The initial drop of menstrual blood releasing… for the first time in 17 months.
The return… and with it another threshold to cross.
This first cycle since our littlest teacher dropped into our world.
I felt the blood filling within me in the days leading up… womb swelling, rage inducing, creativity firing… the familiar rhythms that have been ‘missing’ since I peed on a stick last year and my world altered forever.
As I rinsed my pads in cold water in the sink I watched every drop circle and swirl before it descended through the plug…
Sacred. Honouring what this blood means to me. An ending. A beginning. A step into what feels like a new chapter with my body.
I want to note that I appreciate it is a privilege to see my menstrual cycle in a positive way. I’ve never had excruciating pain or discomfort during my bleeds. However my cycles haven’t been without challenges.
It isn’t the first time I have experienced her returning. Of course after the birth of Sophia in 2019, but a few years before that I had hypothalamic amenorrhea (no menstrual bleed) for four years, and in that time I developed a huge reverence for this cycle in my body.
Something missing
It was 2017… and I had made peace with ‘her’ not returning. I had grieved the blood. Come to terms with the fact that perhaps she wasn’t going to return and that motherhood was not in my path.
It took a long time, but I did trust the path my body was taking. Even though it hurt my heart and made me feel a sense of something ‘missing’.
I sat in my first women’s circle the week before she returned to me and cried for what I had lost. Before she had become absent I had never appreciated just what this cycle meant to me.
It was during this phase in my life that I really connected to the lunar cycle as my anchor - Grandmother moon became my compass and actually I can see now that it was the absence of these obvious inner seasons within me that made me deepen my connection with the outside seasons and truly get to know my body’s own rhythms.
And then one day she returned.
At the end of 2017 she came back to me. Four years of intense anxiety and stress, of questions without answers, of feeling a void in my body. The weight lifted almost instantly and it marked the beginning of a new relationship with my blood.
I gave myself the chance to truly honour the rite of passage, shifting from non bleeding woman to bleeding again. Having not been celebrated in my menarche as a teenager, it was like I had been given another chance to truly witness this step into a new phase.
I gifted myself all that I hope I can one day gift my daughters when they pass through this rite of passage. Rest. A beautiful piece of jewellery. Nourishment. Gentleness.
I reclaimed my blood as sacred. As divine. And with that - I reclaimed a piece of ancient wisdom that had been lost in the generations before me.
Yet with the return of my bleed this time there is also grief tangled up in the release, as I honour and mark another transition in my Motherhood journey.
An ending
The next time my blood stops will, I suspect, mark reaching menopause.
It will not be because of pregnancy because Vesper will be my last baby. So there is the end of that chapter - which feels both expansive and also cloaked with sadness. Even though I 100% know that I do not wish to be pregnant again, or have any further babies, I also honour the ache within me that knows I will never again hold a newborn baby, fresh from my womb, against my chest and fall in love in a way that has blown my world apart in the best possible way.
This time the return of my blood also corresponds with the end of breastfeeding.
Two weeks before my bleed returned Vesper took her last drop of milk from my breast.
Our breastfeeding journey has been far from linear, but it has been ours - and for it to come to an end feels like a door closing that I really didn’t want to shut yet.
I didn’t know it would be the last feed…
I’m not sure if it would have been better to know so I could cherish it more…
Or if it is better to have just let it be…
Tears swell every time I get to this point.
She had only been feeding at night since she was 6 months old, we have combi fed from the start. A part of me wants to ‘explain’ why but also I am learning to not justify my choices. For so many reasons, this was the right decision for us, for me, for her, for my mental wellbeing.
Over time those feeds have dropped to a few a night, and then one a night, and then… none.
It was lead by her, there was no dramatic or stressful experience - I would have continued but when I next offered the breast to her, she turned away. I trust her decisions, even though my heart aches to still have those moments when it was just us.
A gift I didn’t know I needed
Every single feed I did with her felt like a gift. Even the feeds that were incredibly hard. Even the feeds that made me want to climb out of my own skin with discomfort.
I never imagined we would get this far, to 9 months and still breastfeeding… even a tiny bit… for some that is nothing, to us it is EVERYTHING!
After a traumatic experience with Sophia that resulted in me ending our breastfeeding journey after 10 days, I went into this second fourth trimester with eyes wide open.
There were times in the early days I wished I could stop, but something just told me to keep going… to let this be a learning journey between us.
I gifted myself so much support this time, I prepared in advance with therapy, I spent time processing my journey with Sophia, I had a lot less expectation and self imposed ideals that I weighed myself down with.
I pumped, I persevered, I supplemented with formula, I sought support from friends and also the most incredible local charity Baby Umbrella. I kept going - something within me knew that if I could stay with it, that it would be one of the most healing and empowering things I had ever done. And I was right.
While Vesper was never exclusively breastfed she was, for a time breastfed around 75% of the time, which was a surprise to me, and is something I am truly proud of.
If you had asked me at the start of our journey if that was possible I would have cried in joy and gratitude because I didn’t think it would be our story. But it was.
I don’t think I would ever have been ‘ready’ for it to end.
I remember on one particularly challenging day, Vesper was struggling to latch, I was getting frustrated and wanting to give up… I took us both upstairs on our own and sat with her - and truly honoured that we were learning this together, talking us both through the process, soothing both of us, taking our time, and she got it. We got it together.
I learned to co-create on an energetic level with this little being - no words necessary just a willingness to learn and be guided by her.
I will never forget the feelings that swell inside with the sensation of the let down, and the sight and sound of her little jaw swallowing, gulping down the milk that my body had made, nourishing her with each drop, soothing her, being her comfort.
Those feelings I will never experience again, and so I am honouring the wave of grief that lands on my inner shores every time I remember them.
Now, nearly four weeks on from that last feed, I lay in the bath and hand express to see if there is any milk left… a few tiny drops… tears sting at my eyes and an ache rises up into my chest and throat… those last drops… they mean so much.
I am full of pride. Full of awe. Full of grief that this is the end of that chapter. Full of gratitude for the moments we had.
Even though our journey wasn’t straightforward it is one of the things I’m the most proud of in my entire life.
So as the last drops of this sweet liquid gold come to an end, the opening of a new chapter beckons as sacred drops of deep red blood release from my womb.
My body a little softer now. My heart has been tenderized by the experience.
Drops of blood. Drops of milk.
Reminders of the journey we have been on.
Forever changed. Forever re-arranged.
I have read some wonderful pieces over the past few weeks here on Substack. This piece on Mother Rage from
was incredible. I adored the words that shared here on Re-imagining Creativity in Motherhood. I have been playing with this slightly alternative approach to Gratitude practice from . I watched this video on Moving Poetry by multiple times and felt so much softening within me.What have you read recently that has left a lasting impact on you? I would love to know.
Until next time beautiful soul,
With so much love
Lauren
xxx
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Lauren, I just want to say thank you...Thank you for trusting us to hold your heart and soul as we read your words. Thank you for taking us on a deep journey of vulnerability and of beauty, of self trust and of deep knowing, of deep respect for self and of listening to your little babe, of grief and loss and birth and love.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This is a really lovely piece. I came to hate breastfeeding in the end. I felt I was trapped by it but when we did stop, although it was an intervention, it still felt unexpected and I was saddened by the knowledge that that was it and I probably would never experience again. But I am so proud I managed as much as I did after a similar experience to you my first son just did not get on with it at all so 16 months or so with my second and I am beyond proud of that and so should you be too. Our bodies are truly amazing and breastfeeding and birthing the babies made me so proud and I feel so privileged to be a woman!