Summary

In “Motherbaby” (93), Cusk explains that she read somewhere that a mother and newborn child should not be referred to as two separate beings, but rather as “mother-and-baby or perhaps motherbaby” (93). She goes on to say that while she finds this unnerving, she sees the logic in it. She compares the human mechanisms through which breastfeeding occurs to compatible machinery, and notes that her first attempts at breastfeeding her daughter do not feel entirely natural. Soon, she discovers the differing opinions on how a feed should be stopped: The midwife explains how to stop the baby from feeding by forcing her gums open, but literature Cusk reads on the subject suggests that babies should be fed according to how hungry they are. This leads her to become preoccupied with the question of how to know when the baby is hungry. At a...