Last weekend, our daughter fed from a bottle of her mother’s breast milk for the first time. The breast milk was pumped and stored in the freezer recently and, after warming it under hot water, our daughter didn’t notice the difference. She finished with a mustache (and flavor savor) worthy of the Milk Mustache Campaign.

To our daughter, it was another lunch. To me, it was the first time that I fed our daughter, and I was overwhelmed.

The same overwhelming feeling that I had when first holding her after birth returned as I watched the milk dwindle from the bottle into her bobbing cheeks. I imagined that this was how my wife feels during feedings. For a moment, I felt like a life-sustaining mom.

It’s hard to rationalize how giving a bottle of someone else’s milk made me feel this way, as I was simply a milkman making a delivery. But when our daughter took the bottle while lying in my arms, it felt like the commingling of mine and my wife’s bodies to create a hybrid being was completed.

Amidst my sappiness, our daughter reminded me that she received my sourness. The truth is that she wasn’t totally happy during the feed because she was overtired. At times she was fussy, fighting the bottle, fighting me, folding her body in half, flailing her arms and legs, and wailing. It was exhausting trying to adjust her in my arms for proper posture and holding the bottle with my one free arm while she was crying to anyone who hears her. It was so exhausting that, by the end of it, all I could think about was how much I appreciated and respected my wife’s unrelenting dedication to breastfeeding our daughter at all ours of the day.

My wife feeds our daughter every day, every three hours, all day, all night. Over the hours, I watch her become physically exhausted from feeding as our overtired daughter kicks, screams, cries, punches (believe it), latches, unlatches, sleeps, wakes, burps, hiccups, farts, poops, groans, grunts, and anything else you can think of. By the end, my wife’s depleted.

Her eyes sink into her face.

Her shoulders slump, arching her spine.

Her arms lower after holding our daughter.

Her legs cramp.

These symptoms arise from feeding a fussy newborn who has fought nap time over time, which is like an athlete fighting Father Time.

The reluctance to nap happens now and then, and its consequences is one of the reasons why we introduced one bottle feed daily in the late afternoon (~4 PM) at the height of her fussiness. The bottle feed makes it easier on her sit back and eat rather than breastfeed, and finally nap.

It’s also easier for my wife when we trade places and I become Mr. Mom.