I just adore...

Breast milk has a few incarnations. There are the very early days of colostrum when it is makes all other superfoods hang their heads in shame for being woefully inadequate to it's golden glory. The magical properties in creating bosoms that plastic surgeons attempt to replicate. Of course there is the oft sniffed perfume of a breastfed baby's mouth, the sweet fragrance brings a strange calm and serenity to the sometimes frazzled adults graced by that baby's presence. Before long, there may be the squishy cheeks and doughy thigh rolls where the rich creme of breastmilk has settled announcing to the world the health of this child. Occasionally for some, regularly for others, breastmilk takes the form of opalescent white droplets, shiny comet streaks or a partially digested milk bath on the shoulder of the honored and trusted adult privileged to be carrying a breastfed baby. Admittedly hopefully more rare is the special cocktail or shot of creamy breastmilk that the darling infant has so carefully run through a highly advanced distillory process in their very own stomach and deposited directly into the open and usually laughing or cooing mouth of a very special big person. Not nearly as pleasant though is the spewing wet missiles of mythological proportions soaking all nearby materials. But perhaps the most revered incarnation of breastmilk is the mustard splatterings sprinkled with seed-pearl and nougat like flecks gathered in paper or cloth materials fastened to the child's lower half. Parents count how many of these a baby creates in the early days, examine it for clues to their baby's health and behavior, and spend astronomical amounts of their financial resources to have the correct gathering receptacles for this by-product of breastmilk. It is possible, though purely observational musings here, that parents, in fact, worship this incarnation of breast milk.
Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen, how we love it. We have even been known to cheer it's creation, solidifying our devotion. Breastmilk poop. How we admire it. And babies give us plenty of it to admire.

There are untold numbers of exploding breastmilk pooh stories in our family. Some day I am sure Earth Baby will thank me for the photos of the exploding breastmilk pooh initiation she gave The Piano Man and I. There could probably be a blog dedicated just to the amazing feats of my children's EBF bowel movements. Just FYI, dressing yourself or your darling poop monster in all white for Easter or really, EVER, is asking for it. Trust me on that, ok? I just didn't know how much I adore the stuff until after my 5th daughter was born. A couple of weeks before her birth, I was having a pretty serious case of nesting. The walls had to be painted and the drabbiest cream colored walls to be banished by color. Seriously, they had to be, if they weren't then that baby was never going to get out of me. I wasn't sure what color but The Piano Man and I picked up some paint color cards and begin imagining. Eventually we settled on some sort of shade of yellow and worked on narrowing down. Couldn't be too light or bright or it would feel like a childcare center. We didn't want anything too green either because it made me think of bile. No version of yellow that was too close to mustard though we were ok with the direction just didn't want it to look like we rolled a hot dog all over our living room. Eventually we settled on a orangy-golden-yellow color. I said it seemed European. And we painted. I was quite happy, laboring in my golden yellow living room a couple of weeks later. It didn't bother me at all that the painters tape was still up because we hadn't finished the trim or the second layer of texturing we were planning. The color of the walls just made me happy, like standing in the sunshine on a hill of freshly mowed grass in perfect 76 degree weather. You can see where this is going.


A week later I was changing Smunchie's diaper on the couch, the transition from meconium to breastmilk poop complete. So proud. I was examining the contents of her diaper when it hit me. My walls? My beautiful, perfect, happy golden yellow walls? Looked like we had painted with EBM poop. I think the company called it golden squash or something like that. They have the name all wrong. It is breastmilk poop yellow. Believe me, I compared it. Exactly the same.

So now, every day, I stand in my living room and think "I love my walls. They look just like poop. I just adore EBF poop."