If I could just pick one day in my life to live over and over again, it may well be today.
Why not? It was a perfect day with you.
We played in the ocean. You “swam” with my hands on your body offering support, guidance, and safety. You loved the waves! You tasted the salt water on your lips with wonder. The sunlight sparkled in your big, blue eyes. May you always nurture your connection to the outdoors and honor the mother ocean, a vital source of life on this earth.
When we got home, you laughed with me as you played tag around the brown arm-chair in the front room. Deep, full, belly laughs emerged and your new teeth sparkled. You ducked behind the chair and popped out with a “Boo!” as if it was the most amazing thing in the world. I bow in gratitude to this miracle of loving you play and find magic in the common place. That chair will never the same in my memory. A door outside of time opened up as we played. Our laughter built a bridge unifying and connecting us to all mothers and children across the generations. May you always relish the deep, life-affirming laughter found in the most simple of games.
After lunch, we went outside and you chased the cat clicking your tongue as you hear me do that when I call her. This reminds me to be ever mindful that you watch me with care. May I always speak, walk, act, and love with a gracious respect for all life.
As the sun set, we played in the back of your dad’s blue Ford pick-up truck. I drummed out a song on the steel bed. You spun around and around a few times dancing. A vast, immense sky of stars emerged above you. You are my star. My child of wonder.
Later, cuddled next to me, I surrendered to the beyond-this-world-tenderness of you snuggling into my arms and nursing to sleep.
If I could live any day in my life over again, it would certainly be a day when you breastfed. I love the holy kindness that comes from the way you suckle milk from my body. It nourishes your every cell. It’s completeness incarnate. Joy incarnate.
I just love you little one. My sweet boy. My courageous, funny, go-down-the-slide-yourself little guy. May you always know how precious you are to me. May you always trust that I’ve got your back. May you know how much your mother loves you, all the way through the marrow of her bones. Because I do.
No matter what happens in this world. No matter what happens at all. These days are holy and precious beyond money, beyond gold, beyond anything. I love offering you the best of my time and energy. I honor each stage of your early development. How blessed we are to spend these days together. It’s perfection through and through. My heart fills with gratitude to your daddy who works long hours in the week to make this possible. We want to give you the best. We choose a life of simple things on the material level and offer you the deepest grace we can muster in the realm of what matters most.
If I could live one day again in my life—this precious, fleeting mysterious, challenging, and holy life— it would be a day like today with you.
I’m sitting on my bed, knees angled in a V, my back against the Robin’s Egg blue wall. My son is building a castle out of over-sized Legos on the table next to the bed.
I’m hopelessly sad. My mother passed away on Christmas Eve. She had a long illness and every Christmas was the “last” Christmas in my mind, but this Christmas Eve she really died. I posted this on Facebook the night she passed:
“When you see Santa in the sky tonight, know Betty’s got the reigns tonight. She died while I was on the phone with her 9:58 MST/11:58 EST (the nurse held the phone to her ear).
Believe it or not, it gives me great joy and peace that she passed on Christmas Eve, exactly two minutes before midnight East Coast time. She has always been on EST as a New Yorker at heart. RIP Betty. No star ever shone brighter than you. I love you always.”
Photo Source: Mother Nature Network
Although her illness progressed slowly, I thought I’d be more prepared. I thought I detached from her more each year she declined in health, but I became more attached with every day she lived.
I took my son to meet her Thanksgiving 2010. She held him and kissed him in her arms. My mother didn’t die young; in fact, she lived a very full active life until the age of 77. Still, I am not ready to have my mother gone. I want to call her desperately. I lived 2,500 miles from her. Now, the distance is immeasurable. The last year her health declined so much she had to live in a nursing home. I visited her as much as I could.
Last May (2011), she had a close call (read this post for details); I received a call from the nursing home on a Thursday night and I was on a plane Saturday. I had to leave my son very abruptly, who was actively breastfeeding – he was one year old. This was difficult, but at the time I had to make a decision. I brought my breast pump and pumped while I was in Colorado.
My husband and in-laws took care of my son. When I arrived at the nursing home it was decided to bring my mom to the hospital. She had a severe bladder infection and was severely dehydrated. When I went to the hospital, my mom was delirious and hallucinating. She said to me, “There are some folks from Heaven here who want me to go with them.” I said, “Tell them to take a number. I just got to town.”
My mother was treated with antibiotics and given IV fluids. She beat the infection and recovered. I stayed a week out West and visited with my mom.
Now my son and I are reading a book as he pulls the zipper down to his jammies and says, “I don’t like my jammies.” We read the book, Road Work Ahead about seven times. Each time we get to the last page he says, “Again. You read it again Mama.”
Now he is asleep in my arms, his little boy eyes closed peacefully. I think about my mother doing the same exact thing for me as a two year old, snuggled deep in her arms listening to her heartbeat. I’ve realized that being a mom made my mom so happy. She was so good at it and I’m lucky to have been blessed with a lively, loving mother.
She was diagnosed with two benign brain tumors in 2000. Her condition deteriorated slowly, almost unnoticeable, until viewed in chunks defined by years.
Now I am grieving. The shock has worn off and I realize she is gone. The grief work for me truly begins now, a little less than a month later.
She will be buried with my father’s ashes at Arlington Cemetery. I will drive her ashes up 95 North with my husband and son to our nation’s capital. I assume the closure of her funeral will help me detach perhaps, but I have not detached as I can’t really detach from her as we were very attached to each other.
I think I put it rather eloquently in a Facebook post about a week after she passed:
“This by far is the deepest pain I have ever felt. It is layered in my mind, body, spirit, for at one time I shared my mother’s body — and heart.”
It’s going to take time. In the meantime, I cherish the moments like this — my son snuggled in my left arm, the memories of my mom alive in my right hand as I write.
I don’t know how Bob got the name. Something about Bob wanting to break up with Ben, my son. I said it in jest and it just took. During the times I didn’t want to breastfeed, somewhere between a meltdown and bad day, I would say to myself or maybe even out loud, “Ben — Bob wants to break-up with you.” Some days I will be honest, I hated breastfeeding. I wanted to slip out the back Jack, make a new plan, Stan…” but I continued breastfeeding because I finally got to a place where I trusted my instinct and my choices. I knew that Ben would decide when it was time to end breastfeeding. I dropped the worry. I dropped the internal criticism. I just followed my heart.
Photo by Megan Oteri
I had a hard time with breastfeeding at first. It was awful. Nipple scabs. Bloody nipples. Pain. PAIN. And more pain. I remember being determined to make it work, but it was awful. Those first weeks of breastfeeding were some form of torture. When my son latched on, it was so painful. I felt like my nipples were rocks with the sensitivity of an ocean full of neurotransmitters right to my breasts and nipples.
We got through it. I called La Leche League. I called friends. I called my mom. But I felt like a failure. Nobody had told me it would be this hard. Nobody mentioned my nipples would have scabs and bleed. My husband came home with four different bags of candy on a particularly hard day. In his hands, he held two bags of candy, creams, Soothies (gel like cooling pads you place over your nipples) — and kindness that can not be measured. He was also draped in some sort of patience suit — he had to have been because I was not at my best those early weeks of breastfeeding. He hugged me. He kissed me. He knew this was something he could not empathize with, but he did offer sympathy. I devoured the bags of candy. Then I put on the cream and placed the Soothies over my breasts. I had a sense of relief for about fifteen minutes, until the next time my son wanted to breastfeed.
My son and me.
I did it all wrong. I had no clue what I was doing. I had never heard of Attachment Parenting. The lactation consultant that the hospital sent over to do a check-in at the home made a ten minute stop at my house. I stumbled to the door and managed to say hello. She gave me a hand held breast pump, quickly explained how to use it and sat with me on the couch for five minutes watching me breastfeed. I was desperate for information.
“Is this the right position?” I asked impatiently.
“Yes,” she offered.
“Are you sure?” I was so desperate — so clueless. So hormonal. OK — I was crazy. I hadn’t slept in a week. As they say in the South, I was a hot mess!
“Is this the easiest way to breastfeed?” I asked, hoping to dig an answer out of her.
“Yes,” she offered again, this time checking something off on her clipboard.
“Can you please show me an easier way to breastfeed? I feel like I am doing it wrong.”
“You’re doing it right.”
She showed me the football hold, telling me this may be easier for me. As my son fumbled in my arms, I felt foreign in my own body. I felt clumsy, unsure, and awful.
Why does it feel like I am doing it wrong? Why does it hurt so much? I wanted to ask.
She left my house. I wanted to scream at her, “Get back over here. We’re not done here. In fact we have not even started. Cancel all your appointments — you are mine for the afternoon.” But I said goodbye and she went on to the next home, the next mom, who was probably just as afraid and insecure as I was.
I called La Leache League immediately after she left and was hysterical, gasping into the phone. I think I thought they too were the enemy and asked them a slue of questions, ending each one with, “You guys probably think I am doing it wrong.”
For some reason they were the enemy. My own breasts were the enemy. The nipples scabs were the shrapnel wounds. My own son, the heavy artillery.
My son, Ben
So, what did work? How did we get to a happy healthy breastfeeding relationship? I worked at it. I suffered through the pain. I called my friend, Debra — who nursed all her children until they were three. She sat with me while I nursed. She watched me. She assured me I was doing it right. I finally allowed myself to believe her. She was very honest. She told me it would hurt until Ben and I got used to each other. She said it took time. It was something new for the both of us. He was learning how to breastfeed, just as much as I was learning to breastfeed.
I went to a local nursing mothers support group. We sat in a circle with our newborn babies — staring at each other and our babies. I broke the ice by saying, “My boobs feel like they are going to explode.” Then we all exchanged stories, fears, laughter, tears. A good friend of mine who was in my Lamaze class suggested I switch my nursing pillow. I ditched the one I was using and took her suggestion.
During the first few weeks, I used to set the alarm for every three hours, then take my Moses Basket filled with pillows, blankets, my safety pin (to remind me where I had nursed last), and the notebook where I wrote down every detail of how long my son nursed for. The basket held my pillows, the Boppy, and the nipple cream; it held my insecurity. I would slather on the cream, turn on the light to the living room, and arrange my pillows so I could start nursing. It was three AM might I add. And I insisted on turning on the living room light. I was so rigid. I was unable to let myself flow in this breastfeeding relationship. It had to be by the book, but I had no book to follow. I should have read more. I should have practiced. I should have…I should have…kept ringing in my ears. I had never heard of Attachment Parenting. I was determined to do it by the book. I even called a friend to ask her about using a pacifier. “I don’t want him to get nipple confusion.” We had an awkward conversation, filled with frantic questions, but answers seemed so far away. I felt alone and lost.
My friend, Debra, who came over and supported me with her smiles, tender looks, and approving nods, just said simply, “Why don’t you nurse him in your bed? Let’s try it. It is much easier lying down.”
I said, “No way, he is NOT coming into our bed. I might roll over him and crush him.”
She just smiled. I knew she knew something I didn’t. I was so determined to use the football hold and the across my chest hold.
Organically, Ben found his way into our bed and we co-slept as a family. I did not roll over him; I did not crush him. In fact, my husband commented on how protective I was of him when we slept, with my arm arching over him like a rainbow.
Photo by Megan Oteri
The truth is, I had to go back to work when my son was four months old; I was exhausted waking up in the middle of the night. I stopped setting my alarm every three hours and learned to trust the fact he would cry when he needed to be fed. He did. We figured it out. Along the way, I learned to trust my own instincts. I became the gardener in our organic garden of mother and son.
Photo by Megan Oteri
We learned together and found our way.
I told my friend, Debra, that there was no way my son would reference my breast by name. There was no way.
She told me a funny story about her three year old having a temper tantrum over wanting Ninny. Her daughter was eating spaghetti by the handful in her high chair. Messy red clumps of sauce on the floor, on the chair, on her hair. Her daughter called out, “Ninny, Ninny, Ninny. I want Ninny.”
Well, now that my son is two and half, he often would ask for the breast by name. In this case, “Bob.” He would say, “Bob inside. Can I have milk inside Bob?” Bob became his comfort, his nurturer, his friend. We decided that we would stop breastfeeding when Ben was ready. Ben has recently stopped. He sometimes lays his head on my breast, smiling and patting Bob.
Around the world, parents love their babies. They do what they think is best to keep them safe, to nurture them, and to help them grow into exceptional human beings. In many Western countries, attachment parenting is being celebrated as a positive choice that parents can make, while in may traditional cultures it is what they’ve been practicing all along.
In September, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to Bangladesh with Save the Children Canada to visit their health and nutrition and education programs. While the main goal of the trip was to understand the needs of children in those countries and have the opportunity to observe the positive results that Save the Children’s programs are having, I found it fascinating to be able to observe similarities and differences in parenting styles and choices.
Although I didn’t have the opportunity to spend enough time with families there to get an in-depth understanding of their parenting styles, there were some observations I was able to make as it relates to some of the principles of attachment parenting.
Prepare for pregnancy, birth and parenting: A lot of remote communities in Bangladesh haven’t had access to health workers or authoritative health information to help women in the community to prepare for pregnancy, birth and parenting. Women have given birth at home, on dirt floors, without a trained birth assistant present. Through Save the Children Canada’s programs, communities are able to found birth centres that act as a central point to care for midwives to care for mothers throughout their pregnancy, birth and postpartum period. The health workers there visit mothers at home during their pregnancies to check in on them and educate them. These communities have also established community action groups and engaged community volunteers to help identify health problems that mothers and babies are facing and to find ways to address those through education and care in their communities.
Feed with love and respect: According to the WHO Global Data Bank on Infant and Young Child Feeding, 98% of babies in Bangladesh are breastfed and the average age of weaning is 33 months. Dig even deeper and you’ll see that 95% of one year olds are still being breastfed as are 91% of two year olds. I was incredibly impressed with these statistics. The idea of a mother being unable to breastfeed is foreign to them because it is so rare that significant breastfeeding problems occur. Breastfeeding is a part of their culture and formula is something that is unnecessary and unaffordable for most. Breastfeeding on cue is the norm in Bangladesh and if anything mothers there need to be taught about the importance of introducing solids at the right time instead of relying on just breast milk to meet the baby’s nutritional needs for too long.
Use Nurturing Touch: One of the ways that women around the world keep their babies close to them is through babywearing. Many traditional cultures have types of wraps or carriers that they use and a lot of those have been adapted and adopted in Western cultures. I was curious to see how the moms carried their babies in Bangladesh and was surprised to find out that they don’t use carriers at all. It isn’t that they were using strollers (they weren’t) or that the babies weren’t being held (they were). But whenever I saw babies they were being carried on a mom’s hip or sitting on a mom’s lap. When I asked why no carriers, I was told that it just isn’t part of their culture and that there are always enough hands around (grandmothers, aunts, friends, etc.) that when the mother needs to put the baby down to do something, someone else can hold the baby. That made a lot of sense to me within a home or community environment, but I have to admit I was tired just watching some of these moms walk along long paths or roads with a large baby on their hip supported by their arm.
Ensure Safe Sleep, Physically and Emotionally: Cribs? What cribs? In all of the homes that we visited in Bangladesh, it was a given that the mom would sleep with the baby. In fact, most homes had only one or two rooms and the whole family slept together in one bed. Educational materials around breastfeeding always picture the mom lying in bed with the baby to nurse at night.
Provide Consistent and Loving Care: In most families and in the Bangladeshi culture, it seems as though consistent and loving care is the norm. Babies are kept close and as they get older, they are given more independence and responsibility, but families remain very close with everyone living in one small space and often working together in the family business. Unfortunately, for some families, that isn’t the reality. If they cannot afford to feed all of their children, they may send some of them away to work as servants (child domestic workers) in another family’s home, often far away. Those children may be sent away as young as six years old, will have no regular contact with their families back in their village, and are often mistreated and abused by the families they are working for.
Overall, from what I saw in Bangladesh, the principles of attachment parenting are very much a part of their culture. They are very community-minded and the village steps in to help raise children in a nurturing environment, helping them to overcome some of the challenges to attachment parenting that are created by the isolation of the nuclear family in Western cultures. The challenges they face are due to the dire economic circumstances that sometimes prevent them from being able to parent in the way that they would like, creating a lot of heartbreak for families and having dire consequences for children.
The good news though is that the work that non-profit organizations like Save the Children are doing in Bangladesh is having exceptional results. The programs are designed in a way that fits with the local culture and that is sustainable, so that communities can take control of their own health, education and destiny.
Annie has been blogging about the art and science of parenting on the PhD in Parenting Blog since May 2008. She is a social, political and consumer advocate on issues of importance to parents, women and children. She uses her blog as a platform to create awareness and to advocate for change, calling out the government, corporations, media and sometimes other bloggers for positions, policies and actions that threaten the rights and well-being of parents and their children
While I wade through a (wonderfully lucky) year of maternity leave with my two small children, I’ve found myself occasionally deluged with the continual motion of the world around me. Nothing has stopped since my son was born in January – friends and family members and groups f which I am a part are having parties and weekends away and all manner of events that, while they sound amazingly fun, just do not work for me. I have a 3.5-year-old. I have an 8-month-old. My days are spent driving to preschool, doing laundry, prepping dinner, soothing boo-boos, mitigating tantrums, singling lullabies. My evenings are spent nursing and rocking and collapsing into bed. So I’ve found myself saying this a lot lately: “Maybe next year.”
Parenting, obviously, involves many choices. Lots of those choices inevitably mean sacrifice or compromise on the part of the parent. Now, on the one hand, I firmly believe that part of being an effective and loving parent is meeting my own needs in addition to those of my children – whether that be a monthly pedicure, book club, La Leche League meeting, whatever. But the plain fact is: if those things that I want interfere with my #1 job, that of parent, I need to consider back-burnering them for a bit.
I didn’t come to this place glibly or quickly. With my first child, that sometimes suffocating intensity of single-child mothering pushed me into occasional frustration over my lack of freedom. But now with my second child, for some reason, I find much more peace in simply doing what my baby needs of me. For my son, at least right now, that means me being with him for frequent nursing and cuddling from his bedtime at about 7 pm until 10 or 11, during which time he is restless and wakeful and just needs me nearby to settle in for some deep sleep later at night. Yes, it pretty much limits my evening activities to reading Kindle books on my iPhone in the dark. But this time around it’s a lot easier for me to know that it’s just for now. It will change. So all those things I might like to do? They just don’t make sense for my family right now. To put it in perspective…
Things I am Missing This Year:
Maya Angelou speaking at a local university.
Concerts by some of my favorite bands that hardly ever come to my area.
Margarita-soaked evenings with girlfriends.
Dinner-and-a-movie dates with my husband. Well, any evening date with my husband, really.
Things I am NOT Missing:
Reading Goodnight Moon to my little boy while he tries to eat the pages.
Singing him to sleep in my arms with Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love” as we walk around in the dark.
Snuggling with my daughter and husband after the baby is asleep, listening to her “read” Dr. Seuss’ “What Was I Scared Of” in her expressive, lispy little girl voice.
A rare few quiet moments after both kids are asleep and my husband and I can actually have a conversation, where, instead of talking about politics or the latest new release, we inevitably talk about how amazing it is to us that our daughter can recite entire books, or how cute our son is when he tucks his lower lip in and hums like he’s talking to us.
Concerts and speakers and date nights and girls’ evenings out will still be there next year or the year after that. But my children will only be this little once, and as each month slips all too quickly between my fingers, I am sure that I am exactly where I need to be. Next year my kids will need me a teeny bit less. And the year after that, even less. And less and less until they will have whole lives, whole personal dramas playing out beyond my knowledge, whole days and weeks and years where I am not the center of their existence. I am so needed right now – more than I will ever be again – and that knowledge makes it easier to turn down those invitations. With any luck I will have years to do those things, but this little boy asleep with his soft fuzzy head on my chest will be grown before I know it, and I’m sure it is this I will want to remember.
I kept detailed journal entries in graduate school for an independent study course on motherhood I designed while my son was a baby. It was called, Motherhood: The New Frontier. I picked five books to read, and basically had free reign to write whatever I wanted to about motherhood. Well, to say the least, these journal entries are raw, edgy, hopeful, honest, vulnerable, and loving (and about a dozen more adjectives). These books on my reading list helped me realize I was not alone with my struggles.
My journal entries eventually turned into a book of my own. One of the themes of my motherhood memoir is the fact that I was practicing Attachment Parenting without even knowing it. AP is flexible and you can adapt the 8 principles to fit your family’s needs. People are up in arms about AP and the recent Time magazine cover. I really don’t understand all the hoopla and outrage, but the Mommy Wars are a real thing. I’m a lover, not a fighter.
Motherhood is beautiful, ugly, difficult, easy, complicated, simple, textured, smooth, heart-breaking, heart-pounding, and one of the most complex relationships.
Mama and baby moose in Yellowstone, Wyoming
My road to motherhood was not easy; I struggled with infertility, postpartum OCD and intrusive thoughts, postpartum depression, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and anxiety. As they say in the South, I was a hot mess. The thing is, nobody really talks about how hard motherhood is. In fact, it is a taboo subject. I guess it is easier to talk about the joys and blissful moments instead of talking about nipple scabs, cracked nipples, sleep deprivation, and all the other dirty little secrets mothers live through.
My little miracle. Hard to believe something as wonderful as being a mom can be so downright terrifying at times. — Photo by Sara Turner
I remember calling my friend, Debra Elramey in tears saying, “Debi, my boobs hurt.” My milk had just come in. I was not told it would feel like the lower falls of Yellowstone were dammed in my breasts.
Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone, Wyoming
I was hunched over the passenger seat of our green Jeep in the parking lot near the super strip mall and my husband was getting me a Subway sandwich. I was trying to be strong, and the baby blues were coming on something fierce. Ben was sleeping peacefully in the car seat, probably a week old. Debi said, in a voice only a good friend can emulate, “Honey, you’re engorged,” she paused while I cried, then said, “You need to get a pump.” I was like, “What is engorged?”
Debi explained the situation and what I needed to do. I got a free hand pump from the city’s lactation consultant that spent ten minutes with me the next day. She said, “Yep, you got this, you’re doing it right,” as if I were some tick mark to check off on a list. I wanted to call her out and say, “Lady, I think you are mistaken — I have no f-ing idea what I am doing! Please sit your a– back down on my couch and please don’t leave.” Instead, I just kept a stiff upper lip until she left and then I cried. My next call was to the La Leche League.
Breastfeeding was hard. My nipples were scabbed, bloody and every time my son latched on, it felt like, well, I can’t remember what it felt like because I was so sleep deprived. I did not prepare for this. In fact, I winged it. I was not aware of attachment parenting and the first principle, Prepare for Pregnancy, Birth, and Parenting. I guess I was like a deer in headlights while I was pregnant. It never really sank in that I was going to be a mother until I was a mother.
I eventually got the hang of breastfeeding. In fact, I am still nursing my two and half year old. My support came from women in a nursing mothers’ group that the lactation specialist from the hospital organized. It was great to be around women who were struggling with the challenges of breastfeeding and motherhood.
My friend, Debra, also came over to my house and sat with me as I nursed my son. I kept asking, “Am I doing it right?” She responded, “You’re doing it, so therefore you are doing it right.”
It wasn’t until I allowed myself to follow my instincts and relax that I realized there is no manual to being a mother. I just followed my heart.
I carry him in my heart. Photo by my wonderful husband.
A nursing 3-year-old doesn't look much different than an infant
In the attachment world, we hear a lot about the importance of breastfeeding. And lots of women breastfeed for an extended period of time.
In our culture, more than a year is considered extended breastfeeding. So that’s what we call it.
I just considered it breastfeeding. I was nursed until I was 3. My mother was a La Leche League leader when I was child, so I grew up understanding the importance of breast milk and hearing the “breast is best” message all my life.
What I never heard was that extended breastfeeding is hard.
Lest you get the wrong idea, I don’t regret doing it. I nursed my daughter for four years. She weaned in May on her fourth birthday. To be honest, it was my idea. I have no doubt in my mind that if it had been up to her, she would still be nursing at least once a day still.
But I was done. And for all intents and purposes, so was she. She just needed a little tiny bit of encouragement and I needed to set the boundary.
Here is a slightly edited version of the post I wrote right after we weaned. I feel it is an important one to share. Because even though I always knew I would breastfeed my child long before she was even born; and even though I never had any supply issues or trouble with latching, there were things about it that were hard. It was hard on my back. Hard on my breasts. And hard on my psyche. And it was totally worth it.
Here is the post written in May of 2012:
We are done. Finally. After four years, exactly four years. My daughter is done nursing.
We made a deal a few months ago that on her fourth birthday she would be done nursing.
It still trips me out that we nursed this long. Even for me, a kid who was nursed for at least three years, the idea of nursing a child for four years seems long to me.
Most of my attachment parenting mama friends weaned in between 2 and 3 or a little longer. But even in my circle of mama friends who nurse their babes way, way longer than the average American nursing mom, I am still an anomaly.
And, in case someone takes it the wrong way, I’m not bragging. It’s the opposite. It feels weird to think that I actually nursed my child this long, even though women around the world do it all the time and many cultures don’t think anything of it.
The truth is, I didn’t love nursing. When my daughter reached 18 months, I remember having thoughts of weaning. I was tired. But I knew that it couldn’t be done without lots of drama. I couldn’t traumatize her. This was one of those instances where some advice from another mom friend echoed in my head that said something to the effect of, “I have to remember who the adult is in this relationship.”
So the adult part of my brain pushed aside the cranky, selfish teenager and said, “You know she is not ready to wean.”
So we plugged away.
I fought it. I reveled in it. I loved it. There were moments when it was the only way I could make it through the day with sanity. And there were moments when I hated it because if I had to sit down one more time while I was in the middle of something else, I was going to scream. But then there were the moments when I was so happy that all I had to do was pop my boob out and five minutes later, heavenly sleep had descended upon my child.
And in the end, I was finally resigned to the idea that I was going to be a mom who nursed her kid way longer than most people. And I’m okay with it. I have a long, cozy relationship with being the odd woman out. It’s all good.
But we’re done. And I don’t really know what to say about it except that we’re done.
For the first week, there was a tiny part of me that whispered, “Keep going. You can do it. She’ll quit eventually on her own.”
That’s what I really wanted. But when she was an infant, which seems so very long ago, I imagined that would be sometime around the age of 2 or 3.
As time went on, I began to imagine that it would be around 3.
That birthday came and went without any signs of letting up. But for my own sanity, I had to set some limits.
She’s told me how much she loves mama milk. It tastes like ice cream, like strawberries. It’s so good, and right before she weaned, she’d been saying she wanted to nurse “forever and ever.” But she also wants to marry one of her female friends (which would be totally fine with me) and sleep at her school on the playground at night after everyone has gone home. She has no real concept of “forever and ever.”
It’s been almost two weeks since we nursed. She asked me last night if she could nurse and even begged a little. I stood firm. And for the first time since we began nursing, it felt like a solid boundary and not an arbitrary no. She didn’t like it, but she also didn’t get overly upset. It was almost like she was testing me.
So, it’s done. We are finally weaned. I don’t feel super emotional. I don’t think I’m hormonal. I’ve always heard of women who get super weepy and sad when they wean their kids. That didn’t happen to me.
I needed to just let Annika nurse as long as she really needed it. We made it. I made it. And in looking back, I’m super proud of myself for just letting it be for so long.
Feeding with love is an incredibly challenging yet important part of our parenting adventure. My husband has a ridiculous number of food allergies, as a toddler I had tons of allergies and my daughter is at risk for allergies. Early in my pregnancy, I came to the decision I would delay solids for our daughter, Arbor, to give her a better chance at avoiding the allergy issue. To me, this was feeding with love. Arbor is exclusively breastfed, which is a great victory to me because she spent her first ten days of life in the NICU. We had some challenges getting started with our breastfeeding relationship so our success has meant the world to me. I had great support and managed to avoid formula, thanks to the great ICN staff and lactation team at Duke. This was also feeding with love.
Now I have a happy and healthy five-month-old who nurses like a champ. Our nursing relationship is one of the single most important parts of our family dynamic. However, we’re getting to the age where most babies start solids. I was really hoping to avoid this until she was a year old. Some people have told me that’s utterly ridiculous while other moms have shared their experience with delaying. Arbor is at the age and developmental phase where she is gaining an interest in food. She’s started grabbing at our plates, has attempted to snatch food from our bowls and follows our every motion as food is moved from fork to mouth. She can now sit independently, has lost the tongue-thrust reflex when her lips are touched and can grab her toys, bring them to her mouth and chew like there’s no tomorrow. Developmentally she’s exactly where she should be in order to begin experiencing solid foods. I’ve been sticking to my guns about waiting until a year though. If you want to learn more about bay food nutrition facts, check this dailymom.com out.
This weekend we had a total game-changer. While my husband was snacking on a bowl of oatmeal, Arbor began her usual visual analysis of this whole “eating” thing Daddy was doing. Then she started chewing her mouth along with him and imitated his motions. She began grunting and leaning in towards him, all but begging for a bite. She grew increasingly frustrated that Daddy was not sharing that marvelous goop with her and I felt like we were being mean for upsetting her. I asked him to go eat in another room so she wouldn’t be as mad, so he hid behind a giant pillow where she wouldn’t see hIs food. I offered her the breast in case she was just hungry… she had no interest. She wanted Daddy’s oatmeal. Fortunately, out of sight, out of mind works for little babies. This frustration didn’t last long but it did open up the weaning discussion for Izzy and me.
We weighed out the pros and cons of both options… but it’s definitely not an easy decision to make. I almost went to the store that instant to pick up some avocados for her to try but Izzy reminded me that it’s only another three weeks until she hits the six-month mark. She might really need those three weeks to let her gut finish closing. After that date, we will keep good wholesome foods on hand that can be her starter foods when she is expressing a deep interest in starting solid food. We believe in baby-led weaning, so it’s important to us to allow Arbor to initiate the process, within reason. This too is feeding with love.
It’s my job as her mother to protect her and I take this role very seriously. It’s equally important that I not get so hung up on my individual goals for her that I’m preventing her from a normal, healthy and even fun part of her growth and development. I’m incredibly excited to see how she reacts to her first taste of flavorful food and am allowing that excitement to be greater than my fear of allergies. So we are preparing to lovingly usher in the next era of our parenting journey. Time to stock up on drop cloths and fresh veggies!
