Intimacy
Kiziak living room
Advertisement
Read this article for free:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
To continue reading, please subscribe:
Monthly Digital Subscription
$19 $0 for the first 4 weeks*
- Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
- Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
- Access News Break, our award-winning app
- Play interactive puzzles
*No charge for 4 weeks then billed as $19 every four weeks (new subscribers and qualified returning subscribers only). Cancel anytime.
Read unlimited articles for free today:
or
Already have an account? Log in here »
Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2018 (2234 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Aurora Kiziak doesn’t have any use for a bowl, glass or spoon at breakfast. The only utensil the four-month-old baby girl needs is her mom’s nipple.
And, like always, Aurora is hungry.
Cradling her youngest child in her arms, Jenn Kiziak lifts her shirt and waits for the baby to latch on. It doesn’t take long until gurgling sounds fill the quiet living room in her suburban home.
“Hi, sweetface,” Kiziak whispers.
It wasn’t always this effortless to breastfeed, the mom of two says — and calling it easy now would still be an overstatement.
“I’m thankful that I’ve had a lot of milk. I’ve had no supply issues, but it’s been a really tough go.”
The persistent mom plans to breastfeed her daughter for at least a year, despite enduring a postpartum period that consisted of weeks of sore, bleeding nipples. She consulted a midwife, private nurse and doctor, and dropped into a city breastfeeding clinic several times for assistance.“It’s something so basic but it feels like I’m doing something incredible at the same time.”–Jenn Kiziak
“It’s still painful sometimes but I know that despite all that, I would never give it up. It’s still so worth it for us,” she says.
“It’s a really special bond we have…. It’s something so basic but it feels like I’m doing something incredible at the same time. I look at her and she’s so healthy and growing so well and I know that’s just from me. That’s just my body sustaining hers.”
Since Aurora won’t take a bottle, Kiziak says she’s constantly breastfeeding; whether it’s on the couch at home or in a grocery-store aisle.
She hasn’t encountered any problems when she feeds Aurora in public, other than an occasional stare from a passerby. And she credits her confidence and experience for that. (She breastfed her son Archer, now three, for one year; it was “super, super easy.”)
“The more people see it, the more they just accept it,” she says. “It’s a boob, it’s there for food. As much as society tells us otherwise, that’s what it’s there for.”
— Maggie Macintosh
Photography by Mikaela MacKenzie
