What got me out of the house for the first time after giving birth was an overwhelming desire for a latte.

I headed to Starbucks, proudly wearing my four-week-old baby Scarlett on my chest. When the teenage barista brought over my coffee, she frowned at the squawking in my shirt. I was trying to feed Scarlett, furtively and awkwardly, but Scarlett had unlatched – and, boy, was she mad. When I lifted my shirt to quiet her, revealing a newborn whose head was smaller than the heavy, blue-veined breast she nursed from, the barista ran away.

Embarrassed and apologetic, I ran, too, taking my baby and my latte for a nursing session in the back seat of my car.

Breastfeeding was new to me. You could tell by my self-consciousness and all my gear: nursing bras with circles cut out, capes for hiding behind, support pillows worn like foam tutus. But as my confidence grew, I went au natural, just baby and me and the elements. I breastfed everywhere – the woods, the beach, the farmers' market,  BART stops and barbecues, museums and malls. Even in the presence of my in-laws.

But the fact is that I was proud. I was entirely sustaining another human being, and she was getting fat and rosy off mother's milk. Breastfeeding is a privilege. And I confess I liked confronting the world with this small act of intimacy, the private in the midst of the public. Plus, the baby's hungry.

To the new nursing mother, breasts are about as sexual as elbows. Birth reinterprets her body as little more than an internal bed and breakfast. In a culture of cleavage, breasts that actually do their job feel radical. Perhaps the nursing mother has become a political figure.

These days, I see so many mothers, pregnant ones, others behind Ergos and strollers. If you see one of us nursing in public – and we are, everywhere, all the time – realize that for her, it's nothing special. It's simply life. Don't be afraid to offer an encouraging smile. Or better yet, a latte.

By Mary Wang

Note: This will air on NPR’s KQED’s Perspectives on Wednesday, August 6 at 6:06 a.m, 7:37 a.m., and 11:33 p.m., with a weekend repeat on Sunday, August 10, at 8:37 a.m.

Labels: KQED, Mary Wang, NPR, Perspectives

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I finally understand why new mothers cut their hair a few months after giving birth. My hair, too, is falling out. It's just one of many physical changes a woman's body goes through in returning her to herself, but one that everyone can see.

I think of it as a kind of mourning, like autumn trees letting go of their leaves now that the flowering is done.

My baby daughter Scarlett's hair is growing just as mine is going.

Mine is beginning to look like the hairline of my father in the shape of a capital M. I wear it like he wore it when he lost it – short, down and slightly forward – hiding the growing patches of white as scalp claims more real estate like the desert.

It's disconcerting to see hundreds of strands litter my open books, my pillowcase, the empty bathtub. They cling to the towel, the backs of my shirts and my hands. I even find them in the folds of my baby's skin, and in her mouth. I'll turn around, feeling somebody touch my arm, only to find it was a falling hair.

Not that I would have traded my life-changing experience in the ultimate female Olympics for something as decorative as hair.

Pregnancy and childbirth are miracles of the body, and when I look into Scarlett's chubby, happy face, all my anxiety goes away. But when I look in the mirror. . .

The loss of my hair reminds me that I'm now a mother. The hormones of pregnancy are tapering, the stretch marks are turning silver, my body begins to winter, letting go of everything it stored. The dark line of longitude that divided my belly's globe, expressing the animal of myself, is gradually being erased.

As for my hair, the women tell me it'll grow back someday. When that day comes, I'll wake up dormant, my body again thin and pretty, but empty.

By Mary Wang

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One sunny Sunday, my husband, Sean, was outside cleaning the glass, with a Shop- Vac from the interior of our station wagon while I paced the sidewalk behind him.

“Why break into a car filled with baby gear and dirty breast pads?” I asked our daughter, Scarlett, over the noise. There were glass crumbs in her car seat and all over the back. Sean called it the Oakland tax.

Just then I felt something rumble below me and looked at my watch. Eleven a.m. It was “Domino” time. I left Sean, butt waggling out of the back seat, and proceeded into the bathroom. I laid Scarlett whimpering down on the changing table, and draped the hanging stripey towel around her head mosquito net style. I surveyed the magazine library, skipping over entire weeks of relentless “New Yorkers,” grabbed the latest Domino magazine, and took a seat.

For fifteen minutes every day, I daydream about remodeling. Those perfectly decorated rooms are my version of “Playboy.”

Just as I was about launch the first torpedo over “Safari Nest,” Scarlett’s plaints escalated to fever pitch. I put the magazine down and crab-walked to her, jeans and black thong strained around my ankles. Scarlett’s red face emerged from her tent of stripes, tears rolling down the sides of her head. I carried her awkwardly back to the toilet, making throaty sounds of comfort.

Once I sat down again, she began plying my breast. Was this really happening? She began her warning cry. I quickly pulled up my tank, lowered by bra and lugged out a boob. Scarlett made excited noises, opened wide and began earnestly sucking. Soon a blast of oxytocin cascaded down my brain, relaxing all my muscles. Torpedo after torpedo dropped into the bowl, followed by a musical pee.

The relief was sublime.

I closed my eyes and thought about the strange position I was in as a mother.
Before my baby, my body was a continual source of shame, an animal controlled through diet, exercise and fashion. Gross natural functions betrayed me. That pretty women made dirt seem a flagrant flaw in the human design. But by the time I gave birth, I had changed my tune.

That my body produced another body was a beauty so great, I had no choice but to feel powerful. Yes, it was a wild animal of profound intelligence that I was riding around inside of. Finally in my ultimate womanhood, I no longer had to hide behind femininity. Scarlett in my arms meant that I was no longer a girl. I could be real.

I sat daydreaming in my bathroom, without noticing that the Shop-Vac’s huffing had ceased. Suddenly the bathroom door opened and there was Sean standing in a big slice of sunlight, observing me nurse our daughter on the potty as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He said just three things:

“They took the iPod.

"It stinks in here.

"How are you going to wipe?”

By Mary Wang

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