I'm leaking.

Warning: this post is heavy on the bodily fluids and human development side of things.

So, a couple of nights ago I was changing into my pajamas, and I made the weirdest discovery. My breasts are leaking! To be more medically precise, I've started to produce colostrum, which I had to check out on wikipedia, where I was informed that

• "Colostrum (also known colloquially as beestings, bisnings or first milk) is a form of milk produced by the mammary glands of mammals in late pregnancy. Most species will generate colostrum just prior to giving birth. Colostrum contains antibodies to protect the newborn against disease, as well as being lower in fat and higher in protein than ordinary milk."

Apparently, this colostrum production and leaking is quite normal starting around week 30, which is where I'll be as of this coming Thursday. 

For some reason, this feels like the most pregnant thing that has happened to me so far. Actually, it feels like the most maternal. As much as it's obvious from the soccer-ball-sized bump under my shirt and the vigorous kicking and spinning and rolling I can feel our baby engaging in that I'm pregnant, all of that is still happening on the inside. I think there's a part of me that's not totally convinced that the end result of this whole science experiment that's been happening to my body for the last almost seven and a half months is really going to result in a human baby at the end of it all. But, if I'm making milk, that's a whole different story. That's something mothers do, which makes me a mother, which makes my head spin pleasantly and really gets the butterflies going in my stomach, although there's a lot less room for them these days.

There's also a way in which, although stretched and a bit distorted by twenty pounds of baby, uterus, extra blood and fluids and general padding, I can still recognize this as my body. It's just going through a phase. Whereas generating colostrum is a trick I've never seen these nipples perform before. This sense of awe, excitement & pride is akin to what I thought I'd feel when I got my first period. Sadly, at that time I was a scared kid, ambivalent about having a sexuality at all, pretty sure my body couldn't be trusted, and just trying to make it through the Wild West of middle school. And so I put on a performance of being excited about menarche, with a few lines stolen from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret performed for my mother at the dinner table, but all I felt was subtly betrayed by a life too complicated and confusing to allow me to celebrate for real.

Things have changed. Instead of middle school crushes on field hockey players and sensitive bad ass skateboarders, I've got a sensitive bad ass husband who loves me more than I ever thought possible and cried when he saw our son on the ultrasound screen. I've (mostly) learned to trust and love my body, and I've achieved a real sense of belonging and professional accomplishment in the world of clinical social work. So, I've been walking around for a few days with a grin in my back pocket, feeling as proud as a little boy who has just harnessed the power of his penis to write his name in the snow for the first time. Look what I can do! I can make colostrum!