"Let Me Feed Her One Last Time"

（from Weixin Account 诗意恩典， 9/13/2023）

Oil painting Breastfeeding Shen Hanwu

I Always Thought a Mother's Embrace Was the Safest Place in the World.

Until I heard Brother Zhuo recount something he had personally experienced — a story that overturned everything I believed. Sometimes, a mother’s embrace is not a sanctuary. Sometimes, not even a baby’s right to feed at her breast can be protected.

Brother Zhuo is from Shenzhen. A few years ago, he flew thousands of miles to visit me. In his suitcase, he brought several photo albums — inside them, the story of his life.

One album held a photo of a little girl. She looked about five or six, delicate and gentle, with an innocent charm.

With a sigh, Brother Zhuo said, “That child... I picked her up from a hospital more than thirty years ago.”

It was 1983. Brother Zhuo worked at a hospital in Hengyang, Hunan. Due to the one-child policy, many babies were abandoned in hospitals. His cousin, who had no children, had asked him to find a baby girl to adopt.

One day, while walking down the maternity ward corridor, Zhuo saw a baby wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes, lying on a bench. She was beautiful. Tucked inside the blanket was a note: This is a child born in violation of the policy. If taken home, our house will be torn down. We beg a kind soul to raise her.

Zhuo immediately called his cousin. But when he returned, the baby was gone. After asking around, he learned another doctor had taken her. He was disappointed.

To his surprise, two days later, he found the same baby back on the bench. For some unknown reason, the doctor had quietly returned her.

Zhuo quickly picked her up. Just as he was about to leave, a frail, exhausted-looking woman stepped forward and stopped him. “I still have some milk,” she said softly. “Let me feed her one last time before you take her.”

He handed the baby over. The woman turned away into a quiet corner, unbuttoned her blouse, and nursed the child. Zhuo stood at a distance, waiting. When she was done, she gave the baby back.

Zhuo took the child home. But his cousin didn’t come right away, so he took a week off to care for the baby himself. Eventually, his cousin convinced his wife, and they came to get her. The wife took one look and fell in love. She raised the girl as her own.

The girl grew more beautiful by the year — smart and talented. She even appeared on TV in a performance. Later, she married a film actor.

Her adoptive father passed away, and her adoptive mother moved to Taiwan. The girl always suspected something about her origins. She wanted to know where she truly came from, but no one could tell her.

Her later life was not happy. She struggled with depression.

Brother Zhuo carries a sense of guilt. He was the one who carried her away. And yet, in a world where even a mother cannot protect the right to feed her own baby, what fate could that child have expected?

He often remembers the woman in the hospital — the one who fed her daughter one final time. “Let me give her one last feed,” she had said. That voice still echoes in his ears.

At first, he thought the woman was a stranger, someone offering kindness in passing.

But with time, he grew more certain: she was the girl's mother.

She had taken the baby from his arms, turned away to hide her tears, and offered her breast. The baby drank happily, unaware that as she let go of her mother’s nipple, she was also letting go of her forever.

And what of the mother — watching her child nurse for the last time? How could her heart not be torn apart?

When Brother Zhuo told me this story, I felt an unbearable ache in my chest.

I’ve always loved a line from a poem: “My heart is quiet and calm, like a weaned child in its mother’s arms.” [1]

But in that era, even the right to suckle at one’s mother’s breast could not be assured.

That misfortune may shadow a child for life. She never knew where she came from. Never knew who her parents were. Her soul lives under a constant cloud.

And she is not alone. How many others have shared this fate?

And those who caused it — do their hearts ever feel remorse?Do their souls, deep down, tremble with fear?

[1] Psalm 131:2, which states in the New International Version (NIV): "But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me"