Elisa Albert was struggling to breastfeed and her son was losing weight fast. When her friend offered to nurse him alongside her own baby, she was shocked. But what was stopping her?

We were on a summer double date under the string lights in the garden at Frankie’s in Brooklyn when Miranda told us she was pregnant. I was pregnant, too, we crowed, and just about as far along. Our husbands beamed. I’d only recently met Miranda, but I didn’t know anyone else expecting a baby: I was delighted to count her as a new friend. Throughout that autumn, we walked to prenatal yoga, discussed midwives and backaches and cravings and marriage and hopes and family, and made our respective preparations.

Miranda’s son was born in a birth centre on New Year’s Day, after three days of labour. We visited when they returned home, sat under their still-twinkling Christmas tree, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the new person. Her mother, a former midwife, and sister were by her side. The place was warm and calm, full of love. Miranda held court from a sofa bed. I cradled her newborn son against my own, still in utero, and marvelled at the turn my life had taken.

I entertained a parade of well-meaning relatives and friends in increasingly wild pain. Inside I was unravelling

Two weeks later, I gave birth at home, after a 13-hour posterior, or back-to-back, labour, which the long-practising, well-respected midwife did not bother to attend. Frankly, it felt like staring death in the face, by which I mean an altogether normal and intense physiological process that has nothing to do with the ordinariness of daily life. Throughout, my husband and doula repeatedly called and texted the midwife, whom we had found privately. She told us it was “probably” early labour. From inside the grip of what turned out to be very active labour, I managed to flat-out demand that she join us, speaking at the phone while the doulka held it to my ear. The midwife sounded annoyed, vaguely put-upon. It was another three hours before she arrived. Minutes later, with a great and unbridled roar, I delivered my son into bathwater.

We wept with joy, held him, kissed him, named him. Eventually, I got out of the bath. My husband lay in bed with our new son on his chest. I showered in a state of trembling, happy shock. The midwife perched on the sink and told me a story about her estranged sister. She handed me a towel, and I remember commiserating, trying to comfort her about her unfortunate relationship with her family, as though we were two cool girls hanging out in the bathroom at a party. One of us just happened to be naked and bleeding, immediately postpartum. I didn’t care; I was too ecstatic. Having just given birth, I felt omnipotent. Epic. Heroic. Unstoppable.

In the days that followed, I entertained a parade of well-meaning but exhausting relatives and friends. I also breastfed around the clock, in increasingly wild pain: engorged and throbbing. I served tea and showed off my newborn and made small talk and acted politely with my guests. Inside, I was unravelling. My home bore little resemblance to the intimate, intensely nurturing bubble I’d witnessed at Miranda’s. The last thing I needed was to be entertaining guests who seemed embarrassed and uncomfortable when I nursed. A deep, overwhelming exhaustion began to take root.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I should use a breast pump every two hours. I should supplement with formula. I should neither pump nor supplement; I should let him get so hungry he would do whatever it took to latch properly. Around and around we went.’ Photograph: Dorothy Hong/The Guardian

At a week-and-a-half old, my baby began to lose weight. Breastfeeding was not going well. This was not abnormal, we were reassured. The baby had a bad latch (meaning his mouth and jaw weren’t yet perfectly coordinated on my breast), or I had low supply, or he had a bad latch because of my low supply, or I had low supply because of the bad latch. One lactation consultant offered advice that was contradicted by a second, whose advice was contradicted by a third. I should use a breast pump every two hours. I should supplement with formula. I should neither pump nor supplement; I should let him get so hungry he would do whatever it took to latch properly. Around and around we went.

Meanwhile, the baby kept losing weight. One of the lactation consultants wrote down information for breast milk banks in New York, but I didn’t think we were that desperate. I appealed to the midwife via email. She suggested I “take it easy”, and was never heard from again. The paediatrician told me to give up and formula feed. That suggestion sent me into a tailspin: I had been fed with formula as a baby myself, and I wanted every kind of distance from my own upbringing. This was going to be different. This was a fresh start. This was ours, and it was new, and it was pure. The imperative to feed my baby from myself blotted out the sun. It was implied by several people in my orbit that this kind of purist thinking was crazy, which only cemented my determination. A line from the poet Muriel Rukeyser ricocheted through my mind: “Pay attention to what they tell you to forget.”

I tried to be cheerful, but when we were alone, I wept, lashed out at my husband, and spiralled into exhausted, muddy irrationality, panicked about failing the precious boy we had only just met. There was very little distinction between day and night. Time took on a strange new cast. I nursed and pumped and nursed and pumped and nursed some more. I remember my husband singing to our crying son while I soaked my breasts in bowls of warm, salty water. I remember cooling my breasts with cabbage leaves, drinking herbal tinctures, pumping and pumping and pumping. I remember hoping each new lactation consultant was going to be The One. I remember hoping the midwife would drop by, or at least return a call. The baby was wetting nappies, but he needed to nurse constantly, and never got a full belly on which he (and I) could rest for a few hours. What was going wrong? Surely I could do this. There must be a way, if only I worked long and hard enough. If only I soldiered on through one more sleepless night, and then one more.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miranda’s son (left) with Elisa’s: ‘Miranda came over with her by now pleasingly plump one-month-old. He was breastfeeding like gangbusters.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Elisa Albert

Miranda came over with her by now pleasingly plump one-month-old. He was breastfeeding like gangbusters. Miranda’s mother – a veritable caricature of maternal sweetness – had moved in for a while to cook and clean and nuzzle and hum. Miranda seemed to be more or less OK. This amazed me. I had not yet left the apartment, was shuffling around in strange combinations of maternity clothes and pyjamas. She unzipped her son from his winter layers to reveal a wacky costume: she had dressed him in all the colours of the rainbow to cheer me up. As we talked, she mentioned in passing that the most effective way to gauge the quality of a newborn’s latch is to have him latch on to someone who knows what a good latch feels like. Interesting, I thought, and filed it away.

The following day, another friend Heather came to visit with her eight-month-old daughter in tow. She was visibly shaken by the sight of our shrivelled infant. “Do you want me to nurse him?” she asked softly, all trace of her usual cerebral irony vanished. This caught me by surprise – it had not occurred to me that another woman might nurse for me – and I quickly said no. Out of propriety, I suppose. Or denial. Or closed-mindedness. Or all three.

For most of human history, wet nurses were exceedingly common. The best of the best made an excellent living as highly prized employees. Sisters and good friends nursed each other’s babies as a matter of convenience. But 100 years of aggressive formula marketing has effectively erased the tradition of women helping each other in this way. I had never heard of anyone I knew nursing another woman’s child, or having her child nursed by another woman, and I had never wondered why. I sat in the rocking chair that night, nipples on fire, inconsolable shrunken baby looking more and more like a plucked chicken in my arms, and a terrible new panic hit me: we were in very serious trouble and could not go on this way.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miranda with Elisa’s son, left, and her own: ‘I handed the baby to her and collapsed into a nearby chair to sob.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Elisa Albert

“Call Miranda,” my husband said when the sun rose. Without hesitation, without my even fully articulating a thing, she said, simply, “Come over.”

We rushed over. I handed the baby to her and collapsed into a nearby chair to sob and thank her and sob and thank her, over and over again. The baby drank and drank and drank. His latch was indeed shallow, but she had a surfeit of compensatory milk. The relief was indescribable. I took a photograph, which felt absurd and vaguely exploitative, but I didn’t know what else to do with myself. Taking that picture was the most uncomfortable thing about the scene: I had unwittingly sensationalised what was a very simple, very personal, altogether quiet moment. A sacred thing. Photographing it, calling attention to it in that way, made it seem fleetingly indecent. Wrong.

Ten minutes later, my baby slept deeply. I felt, for the first time since the night he was born, that everything was going to be OK. I could feel my body unclench, my breathing slow and deepen, my mind quiet. My son had nursed well and was now peaceful in my arms. Miranda acted like it was no big deal. The idea that women have a hair-trigger for jealousy, that we despise each other as a matter of course, is a toxic hangover from adolescence. I felt no envy when I saw Miranda nurse my son. I longed to be able to nurse my baby, but I only felt fortunate that someone else could and did. I wondered aloud why we hadn’t just done this sooner. I kicked myself for waiting so long. Miranda laughed. “You weren’t ready,” she shrugged. We lay on the floor with the babies. Our husbands brought us tea.

Where matters of the heart are concerned, I had been rather unlucky with regard to women. My relationship with my own mother is a challenging work-in-progress. I always had my share of friends, some of them good, but rarely did I feel I could trust women completely. Inevitably, it seemed, there was a hefty serving of cliquishness with a side of subverted rage. It didn’t help that I seemed to want so much more from women than I ever wanted from men – I wanted the world. So I was often that much more disappointed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘For most of human history, wet nurses were common. But 100 years of aggressive formula marketing has effectively erased the tradition.’ Photograph: Perou/The Guardian

I had adored the midwife’s arrogance when she first dropped by for prenatal exams. She acted as if birth was no big deal, and I wanted to impress her, to earn her respect, by taking on the same attitude. But it turned out that birth is a big deal. Not because it’s necessarily pathological, but because we are so fundamentally vulnerable, and because how we’re treated when we’re vulnerable can alter us profoundly, for better or for worse. What a stupid cosmic joke: I’d picked a “cool” midwife who turned out to embody the coldness and disrespect I wanted to avoid by giving birth at home. I was stunned to have made so colossal an error in judgment. Cool, it turned out, is not a useful character trait in a midwife (or in anyone, when it comes down to it). Having been let down by the midwife haunted me.

Miranda continued to nurse for me, so casually, it went almost without saying. I finally found a lactation consultant whose advice made sense. I supplemented with formula until I got nursing on track, which took three months, biweekly follow-ups, a hospital-grade rental pump, and a level of determination and commitment I was proud to discover I had. Never mind that my struggle called forth a certain hostility in some: as though I was fomenting some bullshit “mummy war” by insisting – at great cost and effort – on the simple act of nursing my baby. I was supposed to accept that, because breastfeeding was exceedingly difficult, I could not do it. I was supposed to concede to that potent cocktail of bad advice that devalues the functional power of the female body. To which I said, and still say: no.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The last thing I needed was to be entertaining guests who seemed embarrassed and uncomfortable when I nursed.’ Photograph: Courtesy of Elisa Albert

It turned out that Miranda knew Maddy, a college friend I hadn’t seen in ages. Maddy happened to live a few blocks away, and had a new baby as well. She invited us all over, and we huddled in her living room, lined up the babies on a blanket, shared our stories, giggled, catnapped, stretched and ordered food. When it was time to go, Maddy handed me several bags of breast milk from her freezer. I had been putting in many hours at the miserable altar of the breast pump, so I knew exactly what it meant to give away those bags.

Talking things through with these women – the mind-blowing experience of birth; the bad midwife; the free-floating anxiety that can take hold when you have no ballast; the pressure to accept “expert” opinion in lieu of advocating for yourself; the work of nursing, the value of nursing; the deep and wilful isolation of women from each other, of women from ourselves; this for ever altered landscape – I began to feel like a warrior, not a victim. We were sisters, and we traded our stories of valour and courage and survival and persistence. Being seen and heard by sympathetic women was more than a great comfort: it was sustaining, urgent and eminently sane.

In the years that followed, I became fascinated with the rights of the childbearing woman, consumed by the many ways in which women are often betrayed by the very people they’ve chosen to help them through this most profound transition. I trained as a childbirth and postpartum doula. I began to understand women better – that there are those of us who have a nurturing resource in our own mother, and those who do not; those who can talk about inhabiting their bodies, and those who cannot; those who are open about their struggles and ambivalence, and those who feign control; those who are lucky enough to be loved and cared for in vulnerability, and those who are not; those who want to line up the babies on a blanket and sit and cook and stretch and talk, and those who do not.

When my oldest brother died young, some people showed up, planted themselves beside me, welcomed my laughter and tears in equal measure – and some did not. Some seemed capable of sitting with it – life, death – and some would do anything to avoid it. The former were worth holding fast; the latter, not so much. Responses to birth and postpartum seemed uncannily similar.

I’ve often thought about writing to my midwife, especially after I met not one, not two, but three other women whom she had similarly neglected. The first unattended woman had developed a swollen cervix from pushing too soon, and wound up in hospital, where she’d delivered by emergency surgery. The second and third had given birth unassisted before the midwife showed up. I had been lucky by comparison.

I longed to be able to nurse my baby, but I felt lucky someone else could. Why hadn’t we done it sooner?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I half-expected Miranda to lord it over me, having been so strong and capable when I was so incapable, so broken.’ Models: Isabella and Daniel from kitschagency.com. Babystart wooden highchair, £49.99, argos.co.uk. Photograph: Perou/The Guardian

Did you have postnatal depression, people wonder. And I shrug. I roll my eyes. I say no. Because it sounds like putting a stupid pink ribbon on post-traumatic stress disorder. And the last thing I wanted was to be medicated. Medicating women for quite reasonable emotional responses to quite unreasonable situations seems backwards. I needed a maternal figure, a dedicated and present midwife, dear and loving friends. I was blessed with one out of three. It could have been worse.

The only people I know who did just fine in the postpartum period are those who score the triumvirate: well cared for in birth, surrounded by supportive peers, helpful elders to stay with them for a time. The others, wild-eyed at the supermarket, prone to tears, unable to nurse or sleep or breathe, a little too eager to make friends at baby groups – I can spot them at 20 paces. We form a vast and sorry club.

It took me a long time to regain my confidence. The state of early motherhood was in many ways a state of crisis, and although my husband was characteristically stalwart and kind, a full partner in every sense, it was the women who calmly, lovingly took my hand and led me through. It turned out I didn’t have to feign invulnerability whatsoever. The more vulnerable I remained, the clearer my vision became, and what I could see, at long last, was a circle of woman comrades, offering me fortitude and nourishment when I was bereft of all. My gratitude only grows with time.

Truthfully, I half-expected Miranda to lord it over me, having been so strong and capable and overflowing when I was so incapable, so broken. Instead, we have the kind of friendship that is warm, genuine and immune to distance or the passage of time. When we’re together, I take a special pleasure in the way she looks at my son: with affection and pride. He is a little bit hers, too.

• Elisa Albert’s novel After Birth is published next month by Chatto & Windus at £16.99. To order a copy for £13.59, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.