I am not breastfeeding.

I feel compelled to share that information because many people continue to labor under the misbelief that I, a 40-plus-year-old woman who last bore a child more than 5 years ago, am breastfeeding.

Each time I go to the pharmacist, the person behind the counter will, just as they're about to hand over my prescribed medication, grip it a bit tighter, pull it back and give me a look I've come to understand.

"I can't give you this," they say. "You're lactating."

Primarily, I object to the term, which focuses more on the process than the end result — the breastfeeding — and makes me sound like a leaky faucet.

But, also, I am not lactating.

My final foray into lactating culminated a short period of time after the birth of my youngest child, when I took my breast pumps and nipple ointment, breast shields and nipple guards, and put them into a bag.

I did not do what I wanted to do with that material, which was send it up on the next rocket full of billionaires headed into outer space with firm instructions for them to fire it into the sun. Instead, I tried to pawn it off on someone else.

For a woman who breastfed for such a short period of time, I had a ridiculous amount of accessories. I even had car adapters for my breast pumps with the kind of shields that go under your clothes so you can have the dubious pleasure of lactating while driving 70 mph down the highway.

But you can't sell that stuff. You can't even give it away.

Apparently, no one wants something that had your bodily fluids — no matter how nutritious — coursing through it. I had to throw it all away, and I did it years ago.

But thanks to some apparently immovable notation in my medical file, I continue to be a breastfeeding mother, at least officially, even up to the point at which my youngest child enters primary school.

Not that there aren't some women who breastfeed — and happily — for as long as they think I'm keeping it up. I've got firsthand evidence, in fact.

As a young reporter, I was conducting an interview with a woman about a topic unrelated to lactating as her children played before us.

Suddenly, her daughter — a child fully 4 years old if she was a day — ran up, yanked down her mother's shirt and began breastfeeding.

The woman gave a deep sigh and shot me a look.

Preschoolers, it seemed to say.

I was horrified.

Not that I had or have a problem with the female body, and I certainly believe mothers should be free to breastfeed whenever and wherever they like.

But the idea that, when I had a child, my body would belong so completely to another being that the person would feel free to spontaneously denude me in front of strangers conducting business? And that it would happen long past the time when said person became capable of tying her own shoes?

That scared me.

But when I had my kids, I felt the pressure that nearly every mother knows: The Pressure to Be Perfect.

And a perfect mother sure as heck breastfeeds.

So, I ate lactation cookies and saw lactation consultants. I took fenugreek and did breast massages. I laughed at the articles saying that to get more milk, I had to get more sleep. I did it all.

But now, I'm done with it. All of it. Thank God.

The only final hurdle is to get that "lactating" note removed from my file. So, I patiently remind the pharmacist each time, and every time I visit a doctor, I ask them to change the notation from "lactater" to "former lactater."

No matter how many tries it takes, I'm gonna make it happen. I just know it.

Because if I can lactate, I can do anything.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: Alex Pasarelu at Unsplash