Petered-out Weaner
I couldn’t help myself - this title just rose to the occasion to describe the end of my breastfeeding journey.
I am officially finished breastfeeding my third baby. I had an opportunity to cut the cord so-to-speak when I came home from my trip to Florida, but I didn’t, and we kind of limped along for the past two weeks by falling into our morning and bedtime nursing routine. Let’s face it - very little sustenance was involved, and my daughter treated it like a fun game of latch-a-boob, a nursing toddler’s version of whack-a-mole, popping back and forth from breast to breast, giggling at her cleverness. She wasn’t settling in for sustenance. It was just something we did for comfort and connection.
I think the timing is right. Or, I am trying to convince myself the timing was right. To be honest, I could have gone on indefinitely, always finding another reason to keep going. The time changed…she has an MRI coming up, won’t it be comforting to still be nursing…it’s the holidays coming up, we’ll be together more…I am trying to sell breastfeeding journals shouldn’t I still be breastfeeding…only a few more months (okay like 7) until she turns two we should just keep going…
Do I think she needs it? Probably not. Am I the one who thinks I still need it? Yes, as I have written about previously back when I was a bad weaner, before I graduated to petered-out weaner. I was expecting a bit more pomp and circumstance to our ending. Like my graduations, where I reaped the rewards of all of my hard work, commemorated in fancy script on fancy paper and accompanied by Latin adjectives. I do have a “World’s Best Pumping Mom” certificate the lactation team at Cincinnati Children’s gave me when my son was in the NICU. So there’s that.
The truth is I can’t even remember when our last official nursing session was - Thursday night? Friday morning? Saturday morning? That’s the thing with kids and time - it’s like those stretchy finger tube things you put a finger from each hand in and can stretch out and in but ultimately gets stuck. I googled this - “finger tube stretchy” and Oriental Trader delivered:
It’s important to note that the official term is finger trap and the description that accompanies it says “everyone loves a laugh.” That sure does sum it up, Oriental Trader, the kid-time continuum that yo-yos from being such a gas (figuratively, literally) to hysterical tears in the laundry room.
Part of me feels like I should have done something to mark the occasion as we humans are wont to do. The other part of me feels like it’s a good thing to keep moving forward and reinforcing ways in which my baby and I are still connected, exploring some new connections, and delighting in her increasing independence. She now proudly sits at the dining room table in a booster seat - she sits down for dinner and tosses her curls back and forth like a champion thoroughbred tossing its mane.
I’m a bundle of emotions right now. Sad, relieved, grateful, wistful. It’s the end of my Eras tour: the exclusively-pumping era, the hybrid pumping-direct breastfeeding era, the exclusively breastfeeding era. (Please note for the longest time I did not get that the name of this tour is the plural form of the word era. I thought it was perhaps a nod to the Renaissance satirist Erasmus. In case you couldn’t tell, I went to a liberal arts college and have a degree in the humanities).
So much of this season of my life has been caught between craving validation and trying to rewire the need for it. Sounds like that damn finger trap. I am working to accept that no one is going to give me an A+ for mothering. It’s not coming. Stop looking for it. There’s no board of regents waiting to confer my honors. Or, maybe there is, but I am the one that needs to bestow the A for myself and make sure every cell in my body gets the message. And I am also going to feel my feelings and honor my desire to celebrate a monumental accomplishment - I breastfed my first baby for 11 months, my second baby for 10 months, and my third baby for 19 months. Add that up and I petered-out a few months shy of a degree. I am going to give myself one anyway with highest honors. And by honors, I mean honoring myself as a worthy being, simply for being.
I was torn between graduation caps and worn out dogs for the social image for this post. I was hoping to find a sleeping dachshund but I went with the pug in a blanket - it captured all the feels and the exact sentiment I have about giving up breastfeeding.
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
Thanks for reading, friends! I missed you last week. My husband and I sponsored, exhibited, and spoke at the National Down Syndrome Society Adult Summit here in our very own Queen City. NDSS is an incredible organization empowering individuals with Down syndrome and their families in many ways. Inspired by our son and driven by our professional expertise, we started a real estate company last year dedicated to providing housing solutions for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, EmpowerMe Living. I’ll be back sometime next week around the holiday.