It was glorious.  Even the last day, when I was suffering from a bad case of food poisoning that left me so nauseous, lifting my head and swallowing made me heave.  I lay there and thought about how in one day I would be home with my babies and Ryan and how thankful I was that I had the luxury of being sick without having to negotiate someone else’s needs.

I did literally pump my way through New York City.  Every major attraction that I went to and any small place where there was a bathroom, I was in there. At night and in the morning I would use the electric pump.  The rest of the time I would use a manual pump or when I was lazy, my hand.  I got very good at aiming.  It killed me though, to see all that milk going to waste.  I did end up freezing some and bringing it home as I just couldn’t bear the thought of dumping all of it.  I would worry that my supply was decreasing or that Miss Heddy would not want to breastfeed anymore but that was far from the case as she refused to take a bottle or sippy cup the entire time I was gone and within a half an hour she was back on the boob (and hasn’t really been off it since).

It took a little getting used to negotiating the world without two little ones.  Sometimes, I reslished in the freedom of being able to stop or not stop, to listen to my needs, to not have to frame everything within the perameters of a infant’s world or a 3 year old’s world.  Then there were the times that I longed for them so much that I would cry.  My arms and lap, empty of the warm solidness of their little bodies, still felt the indentations and grooves left by them and would ache to be filled.  I would find myself turning to Ryan to make a comment and be startled that he wasn’t beside me.

I did have my family and that was wonderful.  I am so incredible lucky to have my sister, mother, brother and aunt and to be able to spend time with them in such closed quarters and end the trip wanting to see them.  My brother, sister and I went out together just us for the first time in our lives.  That in itself was worth the trip.  Holding my sister in my arms, outside the apartment at the end of the evening and listening to her talk about dad – that too was priceless.

The best part – coming home to my family absolutely and completely solid in my knowledge that I belong with them.