Intimacy
Kiziak living room
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/08/2018 (2367 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
