It’s here! The first episode of the Postpartum Production podcast Season 3 drops today!
This season’s focus is on the intersection of childbirth and artistic practice — and I can promise you it is full of lots of incredible guests with inspiring stories that sit at this unexpected juncture.
Today, in honor of what feels as momentous as a third birth and the upcoming Mother’s Day holiday (yeah, we kinda sorta planned the Season 3 launch this way; our season kept getting delayed due to my health, so it seemed as good enough a reason to jump on the capitalist bandwagon that wants us to buy Mother’s Day flowers and chocolates but still won’t pass a damn federal bill to support caregiving and postpartum parents — for a laugh while you’re crying about this feeling, check out this throwback John Oliver Mother’s Day episode) we are launching Season 3. You can listen via Spotify and Apple.
Here on Substack, I’m also re-publishing a piece I wrote a few years ago for Mom Egg Review about the lactating Mother of Jesus, “Madonna del Latte,” which you can read in its entirety below.
But first! Our debut episode of Season 3 features artist-mother Alexandra Carter, who was 38 weeks pregnant when we connected. We discussed her obsession with the “monstrous feminine” and how this impacts her daily art practice.
Slight spoiler: the birth of her second child, just weeks later, very much featured this monstrous feminine and we’ll be releasing an episode entirely about that birth story later! You won’t want to miss it — it’s one of those “you can’t write something this good” stories.
And for now: Happy Mother’s Day to those of you who are mothering, who have been mothered, who miss your mothers, and all iterations of the ways in which we experience mothering. From all of us at the Postpartum Production Podcast to you and yours: May your day be filled with news of new legislation passed to support caregivers and a wholly new culture that venerates all of the work which lives and breathes outside of capitalist production.
Speaking of, no one has paid me for these eight, yes, you read that right — eight years of breastfeeding three small humans, but I’m paid in chocolate and spa days, right?
On that note, here’s the essay I wrote about lactation, spirituality, and early motherhood/writing. And below that is some recommended reading!
“Madonna del Latte”
To be a virgin but a mother. What is that? Impossible.
Not so unlike you, and then me, huddling in the basement to write this, anything—little feet pat pat pattering on the ceiling above, demanding in their desire to be heard, held: witness this, they say, and I try, but what of writing, what of artistic creation?
(Hear their feet like giant hammers to your head, the wooden floor folding, a century of feet stomping dents into a house where my eldest claims she once saw the ghosts who built these walls.)
The uterus swells and in me grows the third—“The size of a lentil!” I exclaim to the kids as if that’s a good thing, this tiny blob that grows from sesame seed to plum in the span of a COVID vaccine schedule.
I’m converting to Judaism but still my childhood in the balcony of St. Theresa’s church had me staring at the virgin mother weekly. She was a sculpture muted in sunbeam or fractured in stained glass, and always, always, her face of peace and distance, as unapproachable yet intriguing as an unidentifiable mushroom on a forest floor.
“I did it!” a tiny, muted toddler voice cries from beyond the ceiling. What did he do? What did I miss? Write. Write. Did I tell you I haven’t finished reading Virginia Woolf? Not one book. Not even the one about a room of one’s own. What is it I crave? That the city around me will empty of every soul, the trees will blossom with cherry fruit, and I’ll trample their fallen berries, squish a bloody trail behind me, the haunting silence of a lack of children echoing my victorious laughter as I spill into the dense, leafy embrace of an interminable forest.
In process/disrupted: Three essays, two novels, one short story, and whatever this is—two children who hate brushing their teeth, loathe bath time, want only to run barefoot on the street where syringes are found wrapped to crossbows. Who do I protect first? Child or art? The answer too obvious except sometimes the little one stumbles above and I look up for only a minute before finishing this sentence punctuated by his cries.
The woman whose books I haven’t read writes: “One can’t write directly about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes; but look at the ceiling, at Grizzle, at the cheaper beasts in the Zoo which are exposed to walkers in Regent’s Park, and the soul slips in.”
I look up at the ceiling and am stuck again: what can I say about a woman I don’t know?
Virgin Mother in medieval paintings, some gilded in gold, framed in light, others painstakingly perfect in their depiction of folds of cherub thighs, angelic cheeks. I want to pinch those cheeks. Cliché. I am nursing three humans—two on the outside, one on the inside—and I struggle to see the angelic here.
Not only virgin, she is also a lactating virgin mother, Madonna del Latte, layers of female identity stacked upon one another, images in chapels, adorned to the walls of church halls, in an era when women were banished from these spaces—virgin lactans, she’s also called, as if her purpose is merely to provide, to sustain the milk and blood of Christ, a form of spiritual nourishment.
In James 19:4-5: “And immediately, the cloud withdrew from the cave and a great light appeared in the cave so that their eyes could not bear it. And a little while later the same light withdrew until an infant appeared. And he came and took the breast of his mother, Mary.”
Huddled here still, I read that in Italy, the virgin mother was worshipped in home shrines, even held in pockets, palmed in hands, a tiny figurine of mother and son to rub when praying, when anxious, when bored. Thomas Aquinas, the Italian Dominican friar, believed breastmilk was drawn from uterine blood (the delayed menses of lactation). Is this transubstantiation then, the breastmilk of the virgin becoming the blood of Christ becoming the Eucharist that melted on my tongue at seven years old in St. Theresa’s Church, rainbowed mosaic dappling the floor beneath my feet, and I was thinking, “I don’t want to eat Jesus,” and yet now my toddler claws at me, begs for milk in the middle of a rainy afternoon, in the middle of a quiet night, in the middle of anything about to be something else.
In iconography of the virgin lactans, the golden halo framing mother’s head and son’s, his hand adorning her chest in protection—or ownership? How I pry my son’s fingers from twiddling my nipple, how I curse and scorn—My body! I affirm protectively and he replies defiantly, No, mine!
Madonna del Latte’s draping blue robes hide what underneath we women of the gestating tribe know: a swollen vagina, postpartum lochia flowing reddish-brown, staining those same luxurious folds in a constant stream of afterbirth.
What we don’t see in her: Aversion. Depleted magnesium so your nipples feel like tiny knives pierce them whenever the toddler latches. Postpartum hemorraging that nearly kills you. Purplish blue stretch marks that never fade. Miasma on your cheeks. Broken tailbones from forceps birth. Third degree tears along the perineum.
Virgin birth: what is that?
Virgin lactation: a pump’s rhythmic whir from the “lactation room” in the bowels of an office tower, the blood of Christ drip drip dripping through plastic flange into the hollow basin of a bottle eager to catch catch catch, miracle of miracles, the milk of Gods.
(Re-published with permission from Mom Egg Review, MER: 20)
Recommended Reading
This Isn’t The China I Remember, by Gish Jen for The New York Times. This article is not at all about motherhood, but as I spent a lot of my adult life in China, this rung true to my experiences, too. Also, it’s just a good read.
The Battle For Attention, by Nathan Heller for The New Yorker. “How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?”
Things I Made, by Cheryl Strayed for
’s Dear Sugar. I felt this deep in my bones, and shared about it on Instagram.The Hidden-Pregnancy Experiment, by Jia Tolentino for The New Yorker. “We are increasingly trading our privacy for a sense of security. Becoming a parent showed me how tempting, and how dangerous, that exchange can be.”
Anne Hathaway Is Done Trying to Please, by David Marchese for The New York Times. This one isn’t about motherhood, either, but it’s a good celeb profile. Anne says she’s not middle aged and that’s cool by me.
Unacceptable Behaviour of The Lunchtime Variety, by Charlotte for
. This is just brilliant. So good, so funny.Childcare Is So Expensive — BUT WHY? By Rebecca Gale for
. Finally, a digestible infographic that explains the issue.Health Care for Women Is Underpaid, by
. My friend Alana’s journalism is always a must-read.
Bookshop.org
Bookshop.org works to connect readers with independent booksellers all over the world. They believe local bookstores are essential community hubs that foster culture, curiosity, and a love of reading, and they’re committed to helping them thrive.
Every purchase on their site financially supports independent bookstores, and I’ve created a “bookstore” where you can find links to the titles that happen to come up on the pod throughout the season. Right now, the “store” includes books referenced in Seasons 1 and 2 — we’ll be adding more as Season 3 goes on.
Enjoy! And as always, thanks for listening and reading.