Why Does My Baby Kick My Face Mid-Breastfeed, Anyway?
Yesterday afternoon I settled into the couch to feed Lila, same as I do at least five times a day. I was wearing that ratty gray sweatshirt I’ve had since college, the one with the coffee stain permanently set into the left cuff, and I’d just poured myself a lukewarm cup of tea that I was hoping I’d get to sip before it got cold. Lila latched fine, everything was going okay, and then out of nowhere—boom. A full foot to my right cheekbone. I yelped so loud my cat ran off the windowsill. My tea sloshed over the edge of the mug onto my sweatpants. It wasn’t even her being fussy, either. She just kept nursing, eyes all half-lidded, like she didn’t just nearly knock my teeth out.
This isn’t even the worst it’s been. Last week my sister-in-law came over to drop off some hand-me-downs, and I was feeding Lila on the couch while we chatted. I’d just leaned forward to grab a cookie off the plate, and Lila pulled her leg back and kicked me straight in the nose. I snort-cried, I’m not even kidding, and my half-eaten cookie went flying right onto her brand new white sneakers. I had a faint purple bruise under my eye after another incident last Tuesday, when I leaned in to tuck her blanket and she got me good. I went to pick up groceries the next day and the cashier kept side-eyeing it until I mumbled “baby” and she just nodded, like she’d been there too.
Before I had Lila, I saw all those soft photos online, right? Glowing mom, snuggled baby, everyone looking peaceful and connected. No one posts the photos of mom holding a hand over her face to block tiny feet, or the bruise under the eye, or the phone that got knocked into a bowl of cheddar goldfish. Wait, that actually happened to me, two weeks ago. I had my phone propped up to watch that silly reality show my coworker won’t stop talking about, and Lila kicked it right off the arm of the couch straight into the snack bowl. I spent 15 minutes picking orange crumbs out of the charging port. No one tells you about that part of breastfeeding. It’s not all gentle bonding. Sometimes it’s just a tiny human using your face as a goalpost.
I googled it once, at 3 a.m. when I was up feeding her and she’d just kicked me in the chin for the third time. All the generic articles say it’s gassiness, or overtired, or they’re just excited and testing out their new leg muscles. All of that makes sense, I guess, but it doesn’t explain why she does it when she’s perfectly content, when her tummy is full and she just had a nap and milk is flowing just fine. Sometimes I think she does it just because my face is there, right? It’s a new thing she can reach, a new toy to play with while she eats. Other times I swear she’s mad that I won’t let her yank my hair while she nurses, so she gets revenge with her feet. I can’t really blame her, I guess. If I was stuck in one place drinking milk for 20 minutes, I’d want something to do too.
It’s way worse in public, of course. Last month I went to that new mom coffee meetup at the library, the one my neighbor invited me to. I was tucked in the corner, covered with a nursing cover, trying to be quiet and not bother anyone, and Lila just kept kicking the woman sitting next to me. I kept apologizing, over and over, and then she kicked the woman’s canvas tote right off her lap, and all her stuff—diapers, a crumbly granola bar, her wallet—went rolling all over the carpet. I wanted to just crawl out the front door. I still think that woman thinks I have a tiny feral child, which, fair, I guess.
I’ve figured out a couple things that work sometimes, if I’m being honest. If I fold up a thin receiving blanket and tuck it between her feet and my chest, that blocks most of the really hard kicks to the face. If I prop her up a little higher on a nursing pillow, her feet end up at my ribs instead of my jaw, which is way better—even if it leaves my neck cricked for an hour after we’re done. Nothing works all the time, though. She always manages to kick the blanket out, or squirm down far enough that her feet are back at my face. I’ve taken to just keeping one free hand up near my face when I feed her now, like a little defensive block. It looks ridiculous, but it’s saved me from at least three black eyes.
Some nights, though, when it’s 2 a.m. and it’s just the two of us in the rocking chair, and the house is quiet, it’s not that bad. She kicks soft, little lazy swings against my arm, not hard enough to hurt, just because she can. I can feel her little toes wiggling through my shirt, and it’s weird, it reminds me when she was still in my belly, kicking me when I was trying to sleep. I used to complain about that then, too, but now I miss it a little, even though I still get annoyed when she scrapes my skin with her sharp little toenails (I trim them twice a week, I swear, they’re still sharp). It’s not all bad, it’s not all good. It’s just… this thing that happens.
I talked to my mom about it last weekend, on the phone. She laughed and said when I was a baby, I kicked my dad straight in the throat while he was holding me feeding me a bottle, made him cough so hard he spilled formula all over his favorite work shirt. Said it’s just what babies do. They don’t know their own strength, they don’t know that your face is off limits for kicking. They’re just figuring out their bodies, and you’re the closest thing to kick.
I still jump every time she does it. I still complain about it to my partner when he gets home from work. I still have that faint old bruise under my eye that hasn’t quite faded yet. Some days we get through a whole feed without a single kick, and I get to finish my tea while it’s still warm, and it feels like winning the lottery. Other days I end up with crumbs in my phone and a new bruise and tea on my sweatpants. That’s just how it goes, I guess. No big lesson, no perfect fix. Just me and my tiny soccer player, figuring it out one feed at a time.
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