to dry up. Katie had just turned one, and although I was willing to continue breastfeeding her, she started to wean herself. No matter how much herbal tea I drank or how often I pumped, my milk supply was dwindling. If I couldn’t keep selling my milk, Katie and I would be in dire financial straits again. I wasn’t sure how else I would be able to make enough money to pay the nanny unless I got a second job, but then I would only be paying more for childcare. I had to do something to keep producing; I just wasn’t sure what.
My milk production continued to decrease, and I had no choice but to let my repeat customers with standing orders know that I wouldn’t be able to complete their orders. Most of them thanked me for letting them know and told me that they would have to move on to other suppliers. I couldn’t blame them. However, one of them emailed me and said that maybe he would be able to help. I told him that I doubted that he would be able to because I had already tried everything from changing my diet to lactation pills, but he seemed confident that he would be able to get my milk flowing freely again.
We started chatting and even though he wouldn’t specifically say what he planned to do that would help, I agreed to meet him the next Saturday at a coffee shop. My nanny usually had Saturdays off and it would cost extra for her to be there on her day off, but I was desperate.
Saturday morning rolled around and I nervously got ready for my meeting with my client. His name was Michael and I knew that he worked in the city, but that was all that I knew. I didn’t get a creepy vibe from my conversations with him, but I was glad we were meeting in a public place. I had never met anyone off the internet before, and it still weirded me out a little.
I arrived at the coffee shop before he did and settled into a comfy chair with a cup of tea. He told me that he would be wearing a light blue shirt and he had dark brown hair. I scanned the customers every few seconds, trying to pick him out in between reading pages of a magazine.
“You must be Angela.” His voice startled me. Somehow, I had missed him walking in. He was tall and tan, his hands shoved into the pockets of his khakis.
“And you must be Michael.” I smiled back at him and stood up to shake his hand. He wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
“Guilty.” He smiled. “I have to say, you are even prettier than I thought you would be.” I blushed at the compliment. I gestured for him to have a seat in the chair across from mine.
“Let’s just cut to the chase,” he said. “Tell me what’s been happening. Why you haven’t been able to make as much milk.”
I told him everything in between sips of tea – all the remedies I had tried, how much I had tried pumping. My eyes started to tear up out of frustration.
“There’s still one thing you haven’t tried.”
“I seriously think I’ve tried everything,” I argued.
“What you need is a mouth on your breast, sucking from you. The mechanical pumps can’t hold a candle to what the human mouth can do.”
“But I’ve tried. Katie doesn’t have any interest in nursing anymore.”
“Then you need to find someone else to nurse.”
“Like become a wet nurse? There’s no way I could do that. I already have a full-time job. I wouldn’t be able to take on feeding a baby on demand.”
“Not a baby. I had something a little different in mind.”
“What’s that?”
He leaned over the table so that his mouth was right beside my ear. “Your milk is the creamiest, most delicious milk I’ve ever tasted,” he whispered. “I would hate it if I didn’t get to taste it anymore. I want to taste it directly from the source, to feel it flow from your breast and into my mouth.”
Part of me was shocked at having a virtual stranger talk to me like that, but part of me was aroused. I hadn’t been with a man since