Let me back up.
Neither of my sisters produced much milk and, therefore, didn’t breastfeed very long. I was as surprised as they were when my milk came in and soaked my shirts until I bought breast pads (wasn’t sure I’d need them so buying them was not a priority... until it was). We were all thrilled and I set a goal to breastfeed Max for a full year.
I’d read somewhere that it’s important to check in with yourself and your baby every few months to make sure you’re both still on board with the boob, so I was very conscious of doing so at six and nine months. Several of my friends had a mutual breakup between their babes and their boobs around that age; some mamas stopped producing milk, some babies stopped being interested and variations between the two. My milk production was solid and Max showed no signs of slowing down in spite getting his first teeth at four months and happily eating solids.
As his first birthday approached, the idea of no longer connecting with, calming and comforting him by breastfeeding made me sad, so I decided to give it a couple more months. Then my schedule changed over the summer and the next thing I know it’s Thanksgiving, Max is 18mos and still full on breastfeeding.
I weaned him down to twice a day (once in the morning and another as part of his bedtime routine at night) between Thanksgiving and Christmas only to fly to Wisconsin for the New Year. He caught a cold and ended up breastfeeding on demand again by the time we flew back to LA. I blinked and my family was here for a visit and Max three months shy of his second birthday.
So yeah. He was a 21mos and a few days that Tuesday afternoon as I held him, telling myself I need to wean him cold turkey like Fraser had been saying for months. I didn’t want to hear it because Max is growing so quickly, I can barely wrap my mind around all of the phases he’s gone through already. Breastfeeding was something special to just us. I had no idea how much I would cherish that bond with my child and am so grateful my body was able to sustain it for as long as it did.
Baby number two is not completely off the table but Max may very well be an only child. Letting go is hard, beauties. I want to freeze time (when he’s not throwing a tantrum) and hold on to various phases of his all too short time as our baby. (I know. I know. Toddler. He's technically a toddler.) He’ll always be our baby, but he’s not even two yet and has had so many incarnations of himself already. His laugh, his voice, what he gets excited about, his face... his limbs no longer have baby fat on them! And while it’s such a gift to watch him grow, it is also heartbreaking to know we’ll never be as important to him as we are now. We recognize that his world revolves around us being around, so Fraser and I take him in as much as we can as he moves from yet another phase he'll never go through again.
It took him six days to stop crying when we walked him over to day care. In fact, on day seven, he waltzed straight to the table with his friends, took off his sweater (I helped), handed it to me, said bye! and turned his back to me to face his friends. When I asked him to give me a hug, he half turned in my direction, gave me a half hug and repeated bye!; I was so proud of him for having the confidence to own that room and know that we’d be back to get him. That said, I also cried as I walked away knowing he’ll continue to open his wings and, if we raise him right, take flight sooner than I’d be ready for it.
Okay. Back to four weeks ago.
I’m having this beautiful, sad mama moment breastfeeding my baby when Max utters mmm the way he does when enjoying a cookie he'd dipped in milk. Whoa! I’m literally food. Don’t get me wrong, I know my breastmilk is nourishment but that “mmm" sounded like that’s delicious, which weirded me out. I knew it was over and immediately felt sad then, eventually, relieved that the time had come. Max threw full on tantrums the first couple days when I gently told him we don’t do that anymore and offered him something else: milk, juice, a cookie, to be held, to play, to go outside... Within a few days, the tantrums became whimpers then a look of disappointment and, finally, a mere change of direction as if to say oh, well; he took it better than I did.
I was super sad for a solid week and talked about weaning Max to anyone who’d listen. It was rough.We live in a one bedroom apartment, so I slept on the couch for a week. Don’t feel bad. Max was still waking up in the middle of the night regularly at 21mos, so I hadn’t slept through the night for about two years. I slept a solid 6-7 hours a night that week, which was heaven. We all did.
When I went back to sleep I our room, none of us slept with Max waking up to talk, play and try to get in my shirt from 2-4am. Once until 6am... back to the couch I went. We all slept well for another week before I snuck back into our room to with my boys. It took several days for him to sleep in his crib again (he'd gotten used to sleeping next to daddy and having all that space), and as much as I enjoyed getting a full night’s sleep, I savor his sweet voice saying hi, mama! and telling me stories for a bit before drifting back to sleep in between us. I'm happy he's now back in his crib, which we push against my side of the bed at night. If he awakens in the middle of the night, I slip a hand through the bars for him to hold until he falls back to sleep, a trick Fraser uses to get put him to sleep in the first place... Another beautiful phase for us to cherish.
Motherhood, man. Greatest gift I’ve ever been given. Complicated terms. Never a dull moment and some of the best, smallest, most authentic moments of joy. I wish this type of happiness (whatever it looks like: the dream job, perfect vacation, delicious cup of coffee, a parking spot at Costco...) for all of you.
Then, just to keep it real, your toddler will dump all of his toys out of their bins and throw himself on the floor screaming bloody murder because the broken hot wheel truck you set aside to glue back together is nowhere to be found.
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