The Hope of the Gospel When Breastfeeding is Hard
“That’s liquid gold right there,” the nurse said, taking the few ounces of breastmilk I had pumped to store away in the fridge. To me, breastmilk felt more like fool’s gold—it had all the shine of real gold but lacked the value for the all the labour it required, especially having already laboured a child into the world.
During my first few weeks with my newborn baby, sleep was a far away dream, I felt like a factory dairy cow, and everything smelled like breastmilk. Life consisted of breastfeeding, sterilizing supplies, and scrubbing spit up from every inch of my home. Perhaps you’re living with similar feelings towards breastfeeding. You feel claustrophobic, tied to a nursing pillow and smothered under a nursing cover. You’re exhausted from the nutrients being sucked out of you. You have frequent clogged ducts that turn into mastitis—an infection that cripples you like the flu.
This act that’s supposed to be so good and natural can feel completely unnatural. So many mothers struggle to breastfeed their babies. It’s crushing. For moms who already have hormones making their emotions turbulent, adding the difficulty of breastfeeding makes for heartache. Where is the hope of the gospel even in this battle with my angry baby and my engorged breasts?
The Fall Changed Breastfeeding
The first sin seeped into every aspect of life, including motherhood (Genesis 3:16). This means what was supposed to come naturally—uniquely crafted, warm milk from a mother’s chest—was now going to come with pain. Babies could be born with lip ties that make breastfeeding difficult. Some mothers don’t produce the amount of milk they’re supposed to. Infections, bacteria, and disease can invade this bond between mother and child. What was created to be natural and simple can now be barricaded by multiple possible obstacles.
It’s okay to be sad about all these breastfeeding struggles. It’s yet another reminder that this world isn’t as it should be, another way in which we groan and long with creation for our new bodies, fully redeemed by Christ (Romans 8:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:1-5). There sin will no longer reign and wreck our bodies making them dysfunction.
Christ Makes Us Good Mothers (Not our Breastfeeding)
But sometimes this rightly felt sadness becomes deafening in our ears, blocking out the gospel. We start to believe that our ability (or inability) to breastfeed is what makes us good mothers. If I don’t breastfeed, my baby won’t be as successful as other children. If I don’t breastfeed, I won’t be able to hold my head high at the mom’s group on Tuesdays. If I don’t breastfeed, I didn’t try hard enough. If I don’t breastfeed, I’ve failed as a mother.
This story we tell ourselves deafens the true gospel with our own works. We’re putting our faith in something we do to make us and our children better. We’re putting our faith in something outside of Scripture’s to sanctify us. We’re trusting in something less than Christ’s work.
We’re both saved and sanctified by God’s grace. We needed God to turn our hearts from stone to flesh in order to first believe, and we still need that same grace to continue making our hearts into the likeness of Christ. Christ is our righteousness before God (because we cannot earn a right standing before him) and by the Holy Spirit we are being made righteous. It’s God who will “equip [us] with everything good that [we] may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever,” (Hebrews 13:21 ESV).
We can be tempted to put so much weight on breastmilk—to the extent of calling it “liquid gold.” But when we’re done breastfeeding, where will we put that hope? Will we place it in school curriculums, healthy meals, or what we do for family devotions? Or will we place our hope in Christ? Christ is purifying us into pure gold, mommas, and he can purify our children too. He saves us and sanctifies us by the gospel (Philippians 2:12-13). Breastfeeding can’t do that for us. We don’t have to utterly despair over our breastfeeding battles, but can take comfort in how Christ is transforming us and our children despite what we feed them.
God is Using this for Good
The fall didn’t surprise God, and neither did its effects. God knew sin would trickle down to us and make breastfeeding a thorn in our sides. But in his wise, good, and loving sovereignty, he likewise is working it out for our good (Romans 8:28-30).
It’s God who sanctifies us. Perhaps these struggles we’re having with breastfeeding right now are his way of refining us into purer gold. Maybe we will learn to persevere through difficulty by continuing to breastfeed. Maybe we will learn to trust God with our children’s health as we feed them from a bottle. Maybe we will learn to be compassionate towards the mom who is giving her daughter formula. We must guard against the boisterous sadness of breastfeeding difficulties that keep us from seeing what God’s good hand is doing. All suffering that we experience is being used to make us more like Christ. As Peter wrote to the persecuted Christians,
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7 ESV)
Whatever we’re being primed to learn, we can all learn yet another way to preach the gospel to ourselves: Mourning what isn’t right in the world, trusting in Christ for our salvation and sanctification, and rejoicing in the wholeness that is to come when we receive new bodies in eternal life. All the while, waiting with hope and watching for what God may be teaching us in our struggles.
