The work of Stefano Vaglio explores the mystery of how infants identify their mother’s breast. Olfaction, he says, is the mutual recognition of biological similarity between a mother and her newborn. It starts early in gestation and continues through birth, and long after.
It turns out there’s a patch of sensory cells, the vomeronasal organ, within the main nasal chamber. Until recently we thought of this as vestigial, a remnant discarded during evolution. But babies use this organ to identify their mother’s milk from the moment of birth.
I love the idea of an innate adaptive response as our first and most basic survival skill. It kicks in while the mother is still in a post-birth phase, before she has acquired the maternal memory to identify her child’s cry or respond to her need. The baby leading the mother into breastfeeding, initiating the fourth trimester of gestation, as she inches toward the breast that will sustain her.
But what about adopting mothers? How do they bond in the absence of such fundamental processes? Today, the doctor might suggest the Newman-Goldfarb protocol for induced lactation.
The non-biological mother can force lactation through supplementing with synthetic galactagogues. Doctors often prescribe a drug designed for nausea. Some take antipsychotics to increase prolactin levels. Many go on the contraceptive pill to up their progesterone. Supporters of the protocol say milk produced in this way is equivalent to natural milk. But breast milk is a magical, immune-boosting elixir. It can change taste, smell, colour and composition to meet a baby’s need, even during a feed. There is no evidence lactation produced using the protocol responds in the same way. Given the dynamic composition of natural milk, it’s hard to know what they tested. No one knows how these drugs might affect a baby.
For adopted people, this protocol can be confronting. On the one hand, many of us suffer from touch deprivation. We have an aching desire for connection. We long for the physical intimacy of our mothers. And yet many of us recoil at the idea of suckling at the breast of our adopter.
And no, it’s not the same as wet nursing or the sharing of breast milk in times of war and famine. The protocol is about a woman’s desire to feel like a legitimate mother. To mimic everything the natural mother might experience. To convince herself, and the world, she has her own child. As if no other mother ever existed.
In the song ‘The Whole Night Sky’, Bruce Cockburn sings about knowing he made it too hard, and how every touch was a laceration.
That’s me. I am a disloyal and transgressive adopted person. I know that despite her caring, her love and her desire, Mavis never smelled like my mother. And I imagine I never felt like her child, not really, not if she’d ever experienced the difference.
There is a word I love. Solastalgia. It’s a neologism that refers to a deep feeling for lost landscapes. It’s meant to cover the loss of the built world, or nature ravaged by climate change. But for me it expresses a longing for the architecture and environment of my mother’s body. Her skin and hair. Her breath and, most of all, her smell. All those things woven into my psyche, recalled but not remembered.
Perhaps Catherine Saunders felt my desire. She hooked her arm through mine, took me on a tour of their office and introduced me to people. ‘You should see the home she created next door,’ she said to one young co-worker.
Her endorsement gave me courage. As we said goodbye I mentioned I’d be moving soon. I told her about the Social Welfare women and their insistence that I find a home.
She patted my shoulder. ‘Everything always works out,’ she said.
A few days later, she came over and held out her hand, palm up. ‘Keys,’ she said. ‘A house in Ponsonby. The council owns it. If you like it, their rent is very reasonable.’
I stared at her in disbelief. She smiled and hugged me. ‘The mayor’s my friend,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Oh, and I might have a job for you. We can talk next week.’
Bonnie had started school at Ponsonby Primary and Rachel was in kindergarten. I picked them up in the car I’d bought with my share of the marriage money — an old Vauxhall Viva with a rusted hole in the floor and doors that leaked in the rain.
As we drove down Clarence Street in the heart of Ponsonby, the girls shouted the numbers. As we neared 89, my heart raced. I knew this house. Hampster had driven me this way when we’d first arrived in Auckland. I’d noticed the three stucco houses in a row, their mirror twins across the street. Two up, two down, as though built for the old country, for immigrants longing for home.
We moved in the following week. The school and kindy and Ponsonby Road were in easy walking distance. Catherine sent over bunks and we set them up in the bigger bedroom. After months sharing mattresses pushed together, the girls did not want to be apart.
We started out in my bed, in the room I would come to love. It was Rachel’s turn to choose the book. Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman. Mavis had read it to me as a child, my heart racing with the fear the bird would never find its mother. I cried as I read it now, and the girls buried themselves beneath my arms, they touched my face and counted my fingers. We were a very touchy family and I basked in the solace of my children.
Later, when the girls were asleep, Hampster knocked on the door and I let him in. He wore his
