Just a Few Words
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Kindness Matters
By Susan Traugh

Life is slippery. Here, take my hand.
~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

I thought I had this nailed. After all, Mary wasn’t my first baby, and I’d done this dozens of times before. So, as I dressed my two kids to go grocery shopping, I was a young mother full of confidence.

Matthew was two. Mary was three weeks. It was my first shopping trip since she’d come home from the hospital. But I’d nursed both my babies, changed their diapers, dressed them up, and piled them into the car.

Matthew had become traumatically brain-injured in a fall when he was one. I’d read that nutrients in mother’s milk helped to build synapses in babies’ brains and could help restore lost function in young children with brain injuries. So, I was tandem nursing both Matthew and Mary. It turned out to be a lovely arrangement for the three of us. Cuddling with a child on each side of me, my babies would nurse together. Matthew would often take breaks to hold his sister’s hand or stroke her hair. And, even at her young age, she’d begun to respond to his caresses with genuine affection. So, I’d found that a quick nursing break before a task yielded contented children. Or so I thought. (Keep reading)