Sour Milk
by Mitzi Weems
I wake long before sunrise, rubbing my eyes, feeling like I am more exhausted than I was when I dozed off three hours ago. I’m pretty sure I never made it to REM sleep, the sounds from the baby monitor keeping me always on the edge of anything restful. When I walk into his room, he is already awake. I can see his big eyes looking at me in the dim, yellow light of the motion-sensor nightlight. He protests when I pick him up and relocate him to the changing table. His little whines and scrunched-up face compel me to work quickly.
His bed and his clothes are soaked through. I guess it’s time to move up to size 3 diapers because this is the third time this has happened. I don’t have time to give him a bath, so I wash him down with a wet washcloth and put a fresh diaper and bed clothes on him. Zipping him up from the bottom to the top, I think whoever designed the sleep sack was a genius. I put him on his play mat while I change the sheet and the waterproof pad under it. No chance I want a fed, content, and sleepy baby to wait on me to do it later.
I sit down in the rocking chair with him in my lap, happy his protests will end soon. When I can’t remember which side he finished on last, I feel of them both. The right side feels fuller and is leaking warmly down my stomach. As I maneuver his head to the right, he starts to cry. But when he has it, he latches on and starts to nurse as if he hasn’t eaten in days, rather than four hours. His jaws open and close in a noisy suck-swallow rhythm as I stroke the soft hair on his head.
Thinking I might jot down a few motherly memories, I reach for my journal on the table next to my chair. The light goes off. No movement, no light. So, I sit in the dark as he eats, worried I will fall asleep from the oxytocin flooding my body. I think of all of the work I need to do, stressing myself out before my day even starts.
When he detaches himself, I flip him over so he can nurse on the other side. He sucks with less frenzy than he did before, and I know he will not take as long on this side. As he nurses, it feels like he is sucking all of the energy from my body. My bones are tired. But he is worth it.
About fifteen minutes later, the oxytocin having drugged me to sleep, I wake up to the tiny feeling of something missing and cold air on my wet nipple. He has detached, asleep, with milk trickling out of the corner of his mouth.
I stand up and carry him to his bed, moving quietly and slowly to put him down without waking him. The light comes on as I move across the room, so I hesitate until I’m sure he’s still asleep. Gently, gently, gently, I lower him to the blue and off-white sheet with little cars and trucks on it. I lightly lay my head on his chest and tummy so he doesn’t feel like he is alone and wake up. The soft fleece against my cheek, the sound of his heart in my ear—the light goes off again—I enjoy the rhythmic in-and-out of his breathing. I could stay this way forever. About two minutes later, though, I slowly stand up and look at my sleeping angel. He’s looking at me with those huge eyes again. Why does he open his eyes wider in the dark? Does it help him see better?
I have to get ready for work, so I slowly move toward the door, hoping he will decide, just this once, he will be content in his bed by himself. When I get to the door, the sound of discontent assaults my ears and I sigh deeply.
“Hey, sweet boy. Mommy’s gotta go to work. Are you sure you don’t wanna just go back to sleep?”
He wails his answer to my question. I pick him up and hold him to my chest with his head on my left shoulder and sway back and forth, jiggling him up and down gently in hopes he will relax and decide to let me go. But he is holding his head up and away from my shoulder and looking at me with those big, round eyes. Clearly, he is wide awake.
I take him into our bedroom where my husband is fast asleep. I say my husband’s name and touch his arm. He continues to sleep and turns to the other side, making a little snorting sound as he does. I say his name again and push his shoulder a little more firmly to wake him up.
“Tag, you’re up. I have to get ready for work.”
My husband sits up slowly and takes one of the three partially-used burp cloths from his nightstand and throws it onto his left shoulder. He sleepily puckers his lips for a kiss before he takes the baby and puts him on his shoulder. Both are back to sleep immediately. How does he do that?
I lightly kiss my son on the back of his head and my husband on his forehead and then go into the dark room across the hall. I can just barely see the sleeping forms of my other two sons in their bunkbeds. I lean down and kiss the head of the form in the bottom bunk. I hate that I can’t reach my oldest son to do the same, so I kiss my fingers and gently touch them to his forehead. Then, I go into the bathroom and close the door to get ready for work.
Three hours later, I’m on a packed Bluebird bus with forty-six other Airmen. There are two more busses like it in the convoy traveling across the white Utah desert.
I’m sitting in the front seat by myself, reviewing the training orders for the day. As the senior member of the group, I am responsible for overseeing the safety of and “commanding” the troops for the training trip. I guiltily wish I was not the senior member. It is so much harder to give orders than to take them. It is so much easier to carry out one part of the mission than to oversee the entire thing.
My breasts start to hurt under the twenty-five-pound weight of my old-style training body armor. So, I take my vest off, thankful for the fact I possess the only seat on the bus with an empty space—a perk of the position. I lay my body armor on my three-day pack next to me on the seat.
The familiar pins-and-needles pain of my milk letting down tells me it is time to pump. In our home, more than a hundred miles behind us, my baby boy is either eating or about to eat.
I can feel milk cooling in concentric circles around my nipples. I discreetly reach under my uniform top and feel of my desert tan t-shirt. I feel what I already know—wet spots on both sides. I ask the bus driver how long it will be before we get to the training range. He says forty-five minutes.
Great, I’ll be drenched by then. Oh, why didn’t I put nursing pads in my bra cups? I was focused on making sure I had the gear I needed and focused on getting to the armory before the report time. That’s why.
I am torn between wishing I had weened my son before this short-notice predeployment training and feeling like I owe him more than the six months he’s had. When I received my orders last week for the training, I went to my PCM for something to dry up my milk so I could just be done with it. But, in usual form when it comes to women’s issues, my twenty-nine-year-old male doctor literally told me to “suck it up”—those exact words. He didn’t even try to help.
Stopping cold turkey wasn’t an option for the baby or unless I wanted another mastitis infection, one of the most painful things I have ever endured.
I return to the plans for the day and try to focus on them so my milk will stop leaking. I actually fall asleep and wake up when the bus stops at the entrance to the training range. One thing nursing three babies has taught me is how to go from dead asleep to instantly productive, something I’ll find useful downrange.
I get out of the bus and show the combined orders and my ID to the gate guard. He looks at them, hands them back, salutes me, and waves us through the gate. All without a word. I smile and say “thank you,” returning the salute.
“Have a good day, ma’am.”
We enter the expansive range, almost a million acres. Traveling to the training area, we occasionally disturb pronghorn antelope as we go. As the road curves around a bare hill in front of us, I look back and see our small convoy of three buses and two HUMVEES has left a slowly dissolving trail of tan dust behind us. It is only 1000 in the morning and already 105 degrees. I pull a small, waterproof spiral notebook from my cargo pocket and make a note for my “After Action Report” that this terrain is certainly appropriate to prepare these Airmen, including me, for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
When the busses eventually pull up to the training area, I note several desert tan tents, various vehicles, and a water buffalo (a vehicle designed to provide drinking water to troops in the field). I leave the bus and talk to the training supervisor, a retired soldier working for a defense contractor that provides combat training at the range.
We are to dismount to a staging area with our weapons and gear and stand by. Given the training schedule for the day, I decide it’s time for everyone to visit the latrines, fill their canteens, and pull out MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for an early lunch. I give instruction to the senior member on each bus. Then, I selfishly look for a bathroom.
I find the line of port-a-potties behind a long, tan tent. Taking off my body armor, I lean it against the outside of the port-a-potty before stepping up and closing the door. In the 110-degree day and tiny space, it smells like I am inside of a sewer.
I take out a small, hand-operated breast pump from the cargo pocket of my pants and attach a breast-shield, a cone-shaped device with a hole in it, from another pocket. The hand pump is not as quick as the industrial-strength electric one back in my office, but it will have to do. I unbutton my uniform top, peel my wet t-shirt off my midriff and breasts, and unclip the left cup of my nursing bra.
After positioning the breast shield over my nipple, I quickly pull and push the little cylinder in and out of the hand pump. I don’t have a bottle to attach, so I start to pump without one. At first, nothing. So, I close my eyes and imagine I am back in my rocking chair, with my baby, nursing. It is so annoying how my milk lets down at the worst times, but then not a drop when I’m trying to pump. As I stand leaning over the toilet hole, I try to relax. After thirty-seconds or so I feel the intensity of my milk letting down, and it starts to flow as the pump continues to pull at my swollen breast. In the dim light, I see milk splatter from in-between the small valve and the tiny white membrane on the bottom of the pump.
When I travel, I usually take home a replacement supply to my husband, the “keeper of the milk.” Alongside my uniforms, I usually pack a briefcase-sized breast pump, supplies, and a little ice chest. Finding a place to pump is never easy. Neither are logistics. Since 9/11 it has been almost impossible to get liquid on a plane, but I fight until I win those battles.
Pumping in the field, especially in a port-a-potty, is not sanitary. So, this time I “pump-and-dump.” My husband will feel uneasy—there is no milk to replenish what he uses today and tomorrow.
My husband is adept at melting and warming the little bags dominating our freezer at home, never using the microwave, of course, since it kills the natural immunity-boosting properties. I think of the little frozen zipper-top bags, a few ounces each, lined up in containers and organized by date—pure gold. I feel guilty. I know their number is dwindling and that formula will soon be a reality for my baby. I feel guilty I am not there to feed him right now. But I know he’s safe and fed, even though he is not with me.
Milk splatters into the toilet hole, onto the bench beside the hole, on the floor, on my desert boots, and on my camouflage pants. I wish I had brought a bottle so it doesn’t splatter everywhere.
In six or seven minutes, when my triceps start to protest the exertion from the in-and-out motion, I notice very little is coming from the pump. After shaking the droplets of milk from the breast shield and unscrewing the hand-pump, I put the breast shield in a zip-lock bag and stow them both in my cargo pockets. At least pump-and-dump doesn’t require me to keep all of the little parts of the hand pump apparatus pristinely clean. At least there’s that.
I don’t have time to pump the other side, although it protests with fullness and leaking. I put a folded, desert-tan bandana into each bra cup. I don’t have time to go the bathroom, either. I’ve taken too much time as it is. I clean up the splattered milk as best I can and open the door.
As I leave the port-a-potty, there is a line of Airmen waiting for the latrines. I feel guilty I have taken so long pumping. I go into the cadre tent to find out if our instructions for the day are ready. The air in the tent is cool, but I hurry out as fast as I can, knowing one of the downfalls of morale is the irritation of “hurry up and wait,” especially when it is inching above 110 degrees.
Later, we sit on tan, silty sand under a covered (blessedly) open-air classroom and receive refresher training. Cadre also issues MILES gear (Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System) and instructs us how to use it. The sensors on the torso and helmet harness alert us when we are hit by a beam from the MILES attachment on the barrel of a weapon. When our sensor alerts, we are to drop to the ground and stay in place. Cadre will issue a KIA or other casualty card. The MILES gear, coupled with blank ammunition rounds, is intended to simulate the reality of combat.
In my experience, MILES gear functionality is not great, but better for this open-environment training than the sim rounds we sometimes use. Sim rounds are live rounds with modified real projectiles and are better used for MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) training since MILES doesn’t work inside structures. Sim rounds can leave very nasty bruises and sometimes some bleeding—if one is hit. I try not to get hit. Both produce the sound of small arms weapon fire to remind us this is not a game.
I divide personnel into squads, making sure to assign squad leaders who need leadership experience but who won’t totally tank this important responsibility. These Airmen don’t get much field training or weapons training before they are split up and sent downrange to work mostly in Army units, so we need to make the best of today.
We begin to rotate through the training lanes which meander through ten-or-so acres. We practice everything from combat formation movements to realistic battle scenarios to combat first aid to casualty reporting and evacuation.
Several hours later, exhausted, I sprint through pinkish haze from a smoke bomb and drop to the ground for a fifty-meter low-crawl under barbed wire with my M-16 in one hand and dragging a field med bag in the other. I’m just glad somebody else has the dead weight of the two-hundred-pound casualty dummy to drag this time. When I hit the ground for the umpteenth time, I feel the full weight of my vest, my gear, and my body on my engorged breasts once again. The pain is intense.
At the end of the lane, I stand up and spit dirt and dried weeds out of my mouth. Sand crystals crunch between my teeth. My bandanas are otherwise utilized, so I blow the muck out of my nose into my hand, wiping it on my pants.
I move out of the way of the Airmen emerging from the low crawl behind me. Mixed with my dripping sweat, milk is seeping out from under my body armor. My uniform is soaked and I smell a unique sour odor. The milk is doing what unrefrigerated milk does after hours at 118 degrees—spoiling. Great! Something else to try to explain, or hide, in my male-dominated reality.
I do not like it, but I ditch the next lane and return to the port-a-potty. I am exhausted, and the day is not even close to over. Plus, I didn’t get lunch, so I’m famished. I down a half of a canteen of water, knowing I’ll never make it if I don’t hydrate, especially when my body is using twice the usual amount of water.
Not knowing when I will have another chance, I pump both breasts—RELIEF—and change into a t-shirt and bra from my three-day pack. I wish I could change my uniform, but don’t have time to remove my boots and peel off these sweat and milk-soaked pants in the small space. It would take forever. Just getting gear off and pulling my pants far enough down to urinate is hard enough—men have such an advantage.
After another few hours of physically grueling activity, the sun is getting low on the horizon. We move to the next segment of the training. Cadre assigns us to the “base camp,” which we must defend, and informs me we will accomplish various missions throughout the night. Mission orders will be issued at the “appropriate” times.
When I get to the command tent, it is already getting dark. We need to get our defensive positions set up. Since we are just a hodgepodge of personnel from various units, I have to quickly assign the functional leadership duties to my senior folks—logistics, operations, security, etc. I assign resources and tell them how many and which troops they have to carry out their duties.
After getting my bearings, I sit down in an actual chair for the first time since we got off the bus that morning. It feels good to sit even if it is a hard folding chair. Cadre appears and tells me we have twenty minutes to mission-plan our first mission. It is a convoy mission to deliver fuel to the fictitious FOB Anchorage.
During the night, we endure five attacks on our base camp and run three convoy missions to various fictitious FOBs (Forward Operating Bases). I command the first convoy mission. Almost to the FOB, we encounter a simulated IED, which disables the lead vehicle. Smoke billows around the vehicle I am in, blinding both the driver and me.
“Contact left! Contact left!” echoes over my radio a split second after the explosion.
We are taking small arms fire on the left of the convoy. I hear the M-16s in the turrets of the HUMVEEs firing at “the enemy.” We don’t train with 50-cals up top like there will be when we get to Iraq.
Following the most current TTPs (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) at the time, I dismount to take cover behind the axle of my vehicle. My legs are way too short to get out of a deuce-and-a-half quickly. I feel the full weight of my body, my vest, and my gear on my tailbone as I hit the ground when I jump down. I will be reminded of this fall, and the resulting herniated disk, every time I do sit-ups for the rest of my life.
I recover quickly, but then struggle to take a prone position with the too-long M-16 rifle. I wish I had been issued an M-5. Its collapsible stock fits me perfectly.
When prone, the back of my too-large body armor pushes the back of my too-large helmet, which, in turn, pushes the front of my helmet down in front of my eyes. As I struggle to see and fight, cadre hands me a card that says, “Your fuel transport vehicles are damaged, but repairable.”
The vehicles in the convoy lose radio communication with each other. Amid the craziness of yelling, weapons fire, smoke, and noise of non-fragmentation grenades, my MILES sensor alerts as I try to move between vehicles to communicate orders. I kneel to the ground in place and stop fighting. Cadre, lurking in the dark, appears and gives me a KIA card.
“Oh, how I have failed as a leader,” I think as guilt washes over me and I lay down on the ground, waiting to be revived.
The “tat . . . tat, tat” of small arms fire surrounds me. Someone has taken my position, using the cover afforded by the vehicle’s steel wheel. My troops continue defending the cargo as I lay there in the dark on my back on the side of the road. My adrenaline subsides as I relax, marveling at the stars in the vast Utah night sky—until I remember there are camel spiders and venomous scorpions and snakes crawling this desert.
Over the next twenty minutes, I feel dozens of imaginary creatures crawling over me, up my sleeves, and into my boots. Blessedly, the engagement ends and I am revived by cadre before anything gets its fangs or stinger into me.
After the engagement ends, I request a LACE report (Liquid, Ammo, Casualties, and Equipment) from the vehicle commanders. Cadre lurks around us, grading us, as we render combat first-aid to the casualties while the mechanics work in a frenzy to repair the “disabled” vehicles. Then we load up our casualties and complete the delivery. Fuel delivered, mission accomplished, we return to base camp.
Later, as I plan the last mission of the night with my deputy and functional leaders, I know I need to pump. But, before that, I really should conduct morale visits at the perimeter DFPs (Defensive Fighting Positions) while it is quiet. I want to ensure troops defending our camp have what they need, are awake, and have their heads in the fight. At one position, I relieve a female troop long enough for her to go to the latrine, and then I get stuck fighting during an enemy attack. Finally, I return to the command tent.
Exhausted and needing sleep, I take my folding chair behind the command tent in the pitch black of the desert. The odor of urine strikes me—I’m not the first to be back here. I lean forward and start to pump directly onto the ground. My arms are tired and bruised, and I almost don’t have the energy. I adjust to face the tent. Hopefully the sandbags and the concrete t-wall will shield me from any NVGs (night vision goggles) looking back this way.
As I pump, I regret that any other nursing mothers on this training trip have even less privacy and less time to pump. There certainly is nothing in the Airman’s Handbook or the many hours of “professional military education” to help us deal with the reality of womanhood or motherhood while carrying out our duties. And there are no accommodations in war. We just have to “suck it up” and deal with it the best we can.
I know I need to ween my baby boy before my deployment next month. But I’m trying to do my best for everyone for as long as I can.
Relieved but famished, I decide to replace some of the calories I have burned. Training taxes all of our bodies. But, for me, the energy sapped by producing milk is greater than the physical exertion of training.
I eat “bar-b-q ribs” cold, having removed the heaters when I field stripped my MREs yesterday. As I eat the rectangular piece of processed meat on the dense, heavy MRE bread, I hydrate with the included electrolyte drink mix. I put it straight into the water of my canteen even though I know I’m not supposed to.
Squeezing applesauce into my mouth from the corner of a tan pouch, I peek out of the tent flap. The cloaked sun’s glow at the edge of the desert tells me our training is almost over, and that it’s about to get hot again.
Troops and gear packed up and on the way back to our home installation, I work on the after-action report. The bus smells like BO, gun powder, and dust—and sour milk. I look at the Airmen who are exhausted and filthy. Some sleep. Some stare out the window. Who knows what kinds of collateral damage and personal sacrifices their deployments will bring them? I wonder how many of them feel like they are cheating someone, or a lot of someones, in their lives by leaving.
Back at the installation, we clean our weapons, count ammunition, and return it all to the armory. We organize and turn in our gear. We try to ignore our screaming muscles as the pain attempts to interfere with what we have to do. After the last troop is gone and the last thing is done, I go home.
When I walk in the door, my two oldest sons are running in circles in the living room. The oldest is chanting “Mommy’s home, Mommy’s home, Mommy’s home” over and over. My three-year-old’s efforts sound more like “Me gnome, me gnome.”
I kiss the big boys on the top of the head, and my husband appears from the kitchen with the baby, who starts to wail violently when he sees me. My milk lets down at the sound of his cries. My husband gives me a quick kiss and tells me he kept the baby hungry, just for me, but he can’t wait much longer.
I drop my gear in front of the door and take off my uniform top, trading it for the baby. My husband holds the uniform top at arm’s length, but doesn’t say anything about the emanating stench. I realize I am way too dirty, regardless of how hungry he is. So, “mommy’s sorry,” and I kiss him, hand him back, and then disappear into my bedroom.
Dust wafts out of each boot as I unlace and remove it. One of my socks is soaked in blood, the corner of my big toenail having eaten into the side of my toe. I peel off my filthy t-shirt, pants, and socks and brush my teeth in a hurry. During my quick shower, milk pours down the front of my body because I haven’t pumped in hours and because I can still hear my baby crying. The warm water, white milk, and blood mix at my feet on their way to the drain.
I make another entrance. The instant my older boys see me, they start up again. Or maybe they never stopped. I sit down on the couch in the living room with my hyperactive sons chanting as my husband disappears to finish dinner.
The baby is angry at me and is screaming at the top of his lungs. I position him in a football hold, and the comparative quiet when he latches on is startling. He acts like he hasn’t eaten in the two days I have been gone. But I know Dad has fed him every four hours since I last walked out the door.
I start to relax as he nurses. My six-year-old tries to crawl into my lap with the baby, his knees and elbows hitting every bruise. Not comfortable, he finally settles for sitting at my left and rubbing the baby’s head as he tells me about his day. As I listen and look out of the picture window in front of me at the mountains, my three-year-old is still running in circles, “Me gnome, me gnome, me gnome.”
I know my husband and my babies have sacrificed. I know they are about to make more sacrifices, ones my babies won’t even understand. And I know when the baby stops eating and soaks me in warm spit up, I will smell, again, like sour milk.
“‘Sour Milk’” is an honest and revealing look at the intersection of military service and breastfeeding. That intersection, possibly the least talked-about aspect of military service, can have an enormous impact on military families.” —Mitzi Weems
Mitzi Weems balanced the important identities of “Mom” and “Sir/Ma’am” and “Honey” for twenty years and retired from active duty in 2018. While she enjoys writing about a variety of topics, her current writing focus illuminates neuro-differences and neurodiversity in our society. Mitzi has been a licensed attorney since 1997 and is published in that field. In addition to writing, Mitzi is passionate about her family and about tending her garden and her chickens.