spiritual practices with newborns: feeding

With a summer baby we slip into bed while the sun is setting behind the hill and we wake up when the sky is already bathed with light. And still we haven’t slept a solid stretch. Because all night he is nursing.

All day and all night and all the hours in what feels like the one long day since he was born.

Feeding the baby is a full-time job.

On the surface it seems a simple response to a simple need. You hear the hungry cry. You offer breast or bottle. But nursing newborns has never been easy as pie for me.

Yet no matter what bumps we encounter along the road to keeping babies well-fed, it’s the all-consuming-ness that can feel most overwhelming. How often newborns need to eat. How long it takes to feed them. How their needs never follow a neat schedule.

It’s no exaggeration to say that baby’s hunger sets the pace for the rest of life spinning around it.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.’ (John 21: 15-17)

This is Jesus’s pastoral charge to Peter, of course – to lead and to serve. But it’s also a commission for each of us. Feed. Tend. Feed.

Sometimes we can generalize how we interpret Scripture’s commands – care for those who are hungry in the spiritual/emotional/symbolic sense. But sometimes we have to take the words at face value, too. Jesus is speaking about feeding after he cooked breakfast for his friends, after all.

Feed my lambs. The youngest. The neediest. The ones who cannot feed themselves.

To feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty are the first two Corporal Works of Mercy in the Catholic tradition. And we all know food and drink are the most basic of human needs. We cannot survive without them.

So feeding these smallest and weakest among us?

The teeth-gritting early weeks of learning to breastfeed? Or the tired task of warming up bottles for a screaming babe in the middle of the night? Searching for the right formula, cutting out dairy to fight fussiness, dealing with engorgement or mastitis or low milk supply?

These are spiritual practices, too.

Feeding the hungry. Caring for the least. Giving to those in need.

Scripture’s full of stories of God feeding us. Manna from heaven and bread from the table. John’s resurrection story of Jesus feeding his friends – with fish, then forgiveness – and asking them to do the same. It matters how we feed others.

And when we back up from the bleary-eyed bumble of feeding baby day and night, we can start to see that we are literally sustaining this little one’s life. That we are nourishing another human being while giving deepest comfort. That we are building up their bones with the knowledge that they are heard, loved, and cared for.

Even when baby starts to eat solids, and feeding begins to feel like just another cooking-and-cleaning chore, we can choose to remember that these acts mean more than three-square-meals-a-day. Because this is how we love in the body.

So maybe this is exactly the work we’re meant to be immersed in, day after day. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.

It’s all he asked of us. Do you love me?

Check out the rest of the spiritual practices with newborns.

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6 Comments

  1. Ben on 23 February 2016 at 11:15 am

    Thank you for sharing this. It really impacted us and we shared about it in our video. These little things are really the biggest thing and you drawing the parallels of Jesus’ words and our babies was spectacular.

  2. Lauren on 20 June 2014 at 4:07 pm

    Ohh! I like that use of John a lot. (I’m always a sucker for John.)

    Apparently I’m just going to relate everything you write these days to things I’ve edited. So in From the Pews in the Back, Kerry Egan writes about breastfeeding her newborn. During the small hours, she would feed her baby in the dark house, and at one point, the eucharistic prayer came to mind: “Take and eat. This is my body, given up for you.” She writes about how profound this connection was for her: this giving of herself to a newborn, the receiving to herself of Christ’s body during Eucharist.

    I don’t think I’ve experienced that part of the eucharistic prayer the same way since.

  3. KA on 18 June 2014 at 4:42 am

    And thank you for recognizing/honoring the many ways we feed our newborns–whether by necessity or choice. 🙂

    • Laura on 19 June 2014 at 12:29 pm

      Absolutely, KA. I think we are lucky to live in a place and time where we have so many options that let us raise healthy babies.

  4. caramac54 on 11 June 2014 at 5:36 pm

    “It matters how we feed others” – I love this …and in light of (another) newborn entering the scene in a couple of months, I’ll come back to this all-consuming, all-necessary time of feeding.

    • Laura on 19 June 2014 at 12:27 pm

      Thank you, Cara! All-consuming, all-necessary – oh yes. Congratulations on baby’s coming arrival – can’t wait to read about it!

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