Summary

In Chapter 14, “now, then”, the narrator struggles to accept that she does not need to breastfeed her daughter any longer. Since she had her first child, Doireann’s days and nights have been informed by breast feeding. She knows that her daughter is old enough to wean but she is afraid of what it means not breastfeed any longer. Doireann’s family make comments about her toddler sucking from her breast, but “she takes such comfort from her moments of milk that to deprive her of it seems not only selfish, but somehow cruel” (213). Eventually, her body stops producing as much milk and Doireann weans her daughter. When she stands in the mirror, the narrator tells herself that her body is a female text. Later, she discovers a lump in her breast. After the doctor takes a biopsy of...