Last Saturday, we were climbing with our friend Lauren and his five year old son Dean. While making towers out of rocks and sticks with Dean, Noah wanted to nurse…so I did. It wasn’t long before I noticed Dean wide eyed, watching our nursing duet.

“WHAT are you doing!” he blurted out curiously.

“I’m giving Noah some mommy milk,” I responded.

“Seriously?” he said in disbelief, like kids do when they’re trying to figure out whether your messing with them or not.

“Seriously,” reply. I could tell he didn’t believe me. Noah plopped off and looked up at me smiling. There were a few drops of milk on my breast; Dean pointed to them and shouted “WOW! I see it! There’s milk! You were right!”

Noah started to nurse again, and Dean fell quiet in amazement. He watched silently a moment longer. “I always thought milk came from bottles,” he said somewhat confused.

“Well, some babies get their milk from bottles and some get their milk from their mamas”.

“Ooooh….” He took a moment to process what I had said. He suddenly sat straight up, face lit, eyes shining with an epiphany. “I know! Like horses!” he says excitedly.

Oh, the sweet innocence of youth! Don’t you love it? I was in the middle of explaining how many living creatures nurse their babies, and those that do are called mammals… when he starts looking very perplexed.

“But how does he get the milk out?” he asked inquisitively.

“Well, he suckles as though he were drinking from a straw”, I explained.

“But how did you make holes so the milk comes out?

“Well, that’s just the way our bodies are made”.

“Oh.”

There is a long pause. Dean continues to stare at Noah suckling away while sighing a satisfied “mmmm, mmmm”. A moment later, Dean asks “Can I try it?”

In hindsight, it seems like the most obvious and natural thing for him to ask, but at that moment, I wasn’t quite sure what to think or say. I scrambled to figure out the best way to turn him down.

“You know, Dean- I don’t feel very comfortable with that, but I’m sure you can ask your mom when you get home”.

And that was that. His interest was diverted to the dogs playing tug of war with a stick. The day progressed and an hour or so later I was belaying my friend while Thu played with Noah. Out of the blue, Dean runs up to me, lifts up his shirt, points to his nipple and disappointingly says: “Mine are too small. I don’t think anything will come out of them”.