The All-Purpose Coping Tool

Last week my family and I drove through six states to attend the funeral of my husband’s 89-year-old grandmother Alice. Breastfeeding saw us through 11 hours on the road over the course of two days. At every pit stop my toddler would nurse — “re-fueling” herself as we re-fueled the car. At each new hotel, nursing helped settle my toddler to sleep in a strange bed. She slept as well or better than she normally does at home.

Once we arrived at our destination, breastfeeding helped my toddler cope with the new surroundings and unfamiliar faces. Everything was wonderfully stimulating for her. It could have been overwhelming, but she knew she could always retreat to the safety and security of a nursing session with me.

As we pulled up to the church for the funeral, my toddler fell asleep. She woke up when I carried her inside, but I was able to nurse her throughout the first part of the service and she eventually fell back asleep for the duration of the ceremony. The loudest noises that came from her were the sucking sounds she made in her sleep as she dreamed of nursing! Through my tears, I looked down at her and reflected on how Alice’s spirit would live on through her beautiful great-granddaughters.

Later on I got many compliments on how well-behaved and quiet my toddler was during the service. I basked in the compliments and didn’t reveal that it was the nursing that did it! Most people did not even realize we had been nursing. I’ve nursed in a lot of places over the years and now I can add a Quaker church in Iowa to the list.

My husband’s grandmother Alice was a wonderful person. Many of her loved ones shared fond memories of her and her loving and lively spirit. One woman recalled how Alice used to re-enact the story of when she was a child on her family farm and she climbed the silo and threw chickens off the top to see if they could fly! She’d imitate the sound of the chickens as they fell. They all survived the ordeal, except one that died of a heart attack on the way down. She had to confess to her parents what had happened to that chicken, and she never tried that experiment again!

Most people spoke of her love, her lively spirit and her determination. If I hadn’t had a toddler asleep in my arms (and if I didn’t have a tendency to cry to the point where I can’t speak), I would have told how Alice was such a generous woman, and how she always knew the right thing to say. When she saw me struggling to raise two young children, she praised them and told me that I was a good mother. Every mother needs to hear that once in a while. I took it as a particularly high compliment coming from Alice.