weaning

on ordinary devotion that goes on and on, and endings

At this moment, I think I feel confident enough to say that my toddler is officially weaned. It feels a little bit tenuous, but we have made it through a minor sickness and quite a few nights now without a backslide, so I think it’s official. My two-year old is weaned. I nursed him for 825 days. The process was very slow and, at the end, quite difficult. For quite a while now, Tommy was only nursing when he needed to go to sleep, which I was very fine with until I developed a pretty rough nursing aversion about a month ago. Nursing suddenly felt very bad (not painful, just bad) and would cause a steep rise in my anxiety. I couldn’t nurse him without being extremely distracted (usually by watching tiktok, not a great habit), or else the anxiety and discomfort would become too great and I would need to physically leave. That was not how I imagined the end of our nursing relationship, I imagined gentle and intentional weaning, maybe even a super special last nursing session where I would cherish every moment. None of that. What finally did it was some gentle deception, or really a bending of the truth. I put bandaids on my nipples and showed Tommy at nap time, told him I had “boo boos” so he couldn’t have any milk. He accepted this so calmly, and allowed me to rock him to sleep instead. I could hardly believe it. He has asked me about milk a few times since, but I just tell him I still have those darn boo boos, and he accepts it and moves on. I’ve been successfully rocking him to sleep since then, after 825 days of nursing him to sleep

one of the first times

This week, I’m also six months pregnant with our second baby. I’m sure that’s why the nursing aversion started, because of all the shifting hormones and the natural drop in milk supply that occurs around 4-5 months pregnant. Lots of women tandem nurse newborns and toddlers, but I think this was my particular body’s way of saying “please don’t do that to me.” I’m happy I will have three months of not nursing any baby to allow my body to reset just a little bit before I have a newborn. I’m happy Tommy was so understanding of my body’s need to stop. I’m sure he’d sensed the change too — in my supply, in the milk itself, in my attitude and comfort level. Children are very perceptive. The nursing mother and the child are a dyad, two parts of a whole. They always say to nurse until it isn’t working for someone in the dyad anymore. It wasn’t working for me.

I feel a little selfish, but I know that Tommy is okay without nursing. He’s a kid now! Still a very bonded and cuddly kid, small and sweet, but he speaks in full sentences! He was ready. And I was beyond ready. He doesn’t really drink cow’s milk to replace the breastmilk — he LOVES extremely diluted apple juice, kefir, and water, so we’re making do with those for his hydration needs. I expected to feel more emotional, but I mostly feel relieved. And proud. I nursed him for so long, for as long as he needed. This act of ordinary devotion was something I was happy to be able to give to him, day after day. A way to be close, a way to comfort and remind him that my body is his home, that I’m still his first safe place and always will be. There’s a natural separation that needed to be made between us, that the child is always needing to walk through. It’s big, not small. I’m so proud of him, and I’m proud of myself.

So many days. Ordinary devotion. It isn’t hard to nurse a baby once it all works itself out, but it’s costly. So, so much time. Hours and hours and hours of my time. So much energy. Calories, nutrients, the food I put into my body being turned into food for him. Breastmilk is made from the mother’s blood. I don’t understand how, but I know that’s the origin. How wild. I’ve shared my very blood with my child for 825 days. “Everything I have I would give to you.” I wrote that in a poem once, and it comes to mind again.

The beginning of our nursing relationship was difficult. I’d done a lot of research, but I still felt so ill-equipped to hold all the information in my mind after the wildness of giving birth. I mistakenly thought that it was every two to three hours after nursing that you were supposed to feed your newborn again, not every two to three hours from the start of the nursing session. (That is confusing, and should absolutely be extremely reiterated to both partners before anyone goes home!) My milk took a few days longer than usual to come in, and when it did I found myself at the extreme emotional lowpoint of my postpartum experience — just weeping and weeping and weeping, and in a lot of pain. Tommy wasn’t getting enough colostrum before my milk came in (not nursing frequently enough? weak latch? all of the above?), and once it did come in I was so engorged that he still couldn’t get enough — and I didn’t know yet how to hand-express or pump, or whether it was the right choice to do those things. So much conflicting information in the frantic google searching I was doing at all hours. I felt frozen and so afraid. I just kept putting him to my breast, which apparently was doing nothing. So Tommy was very, very hungry, and he became jaundiced. It wasn’t until an alarming telehealth appointment after-hours with our pediatrician that we realized that we were very near a medical emergency and we needed to immediately start triple feeding (nursing, then pumping, then feeding the pumped milk with a bottle or spoon, an extremely exhausting way to feed a newborn), and supplementing with formula to make sure that Tommy wouldn’t become severely dehydrated and malnourished and need to be rushed to the ER.

I felt then like I failed. And, in some ways, I had. My baby was effectively starving. Thank goodness for the friends I called for help and advice, and for our doctor who assessed him and gently but confidently told us exactly what to do and how to do it in great detail. And from there, I snapped into action to try to preserve our nursing relationship and help him get healthy. I pumped around the clock with a horrible hand pump. It was all I had until my electric pump that was free through insurance (which I’d forgotten to order in all the hubbub) came in the mail. The hand pump was painful, and had an awful squeak like a flock of geese. It was so tiring to squeeze the handle over and over for twenty minutes on each side, even in the middle of the night. Looking back, I can’t believe I did that, especially so freshly postpartum, not sleeping, still bleeding. I did it because I had to, because I wanted to feed my baby.

There’s more to the story, but eventually we found our rhythm and I was able to exclusively breastfeed my baby, as I’d always hoped. Our breastfeeding relationship shifted from that burst of early intensity, that feeling of hard-won-ness, to simple dailiness. I didn’t love breastfeeding, but I was so happy that it was working — that Tommy was growing, that there was milk and he was drinking it, and I was able to take care of him in that way. We still had problems. Tommy developed some sort of food allergy when he was about two months old, and I had to cut milk, eggs, and soy out of my diet, one by one. More ordinary devotion, setting aside many of my favorite foods for an undetermined amount of time so I could keep feeding my baby. This was really hard for me, but still I was happy to do it. It was never a question. Sort of like the squeaky hand pump, I can’t believe I did that, for almost a year! No cheese! No pizza! Weird vegan replacements to try to get enough protein! Such discomfort! All in a time when my life had shifted so much and I could have really used the gentle pleasure of a comfort food every now and then. I don’t think I did it because I’m some sort of good person, I just did it because I’m a mom, and I was able to, and, out of that same ordinary devotion, it just was what I had to do. I have no qualms against formula (though the non-dairy hypoallergenic formulas that would have been recommended in our case have a particularly alarming ingredient list that I was not keen on), but I wanted to nurse him if I could. It felt important to me. Every time I would nurse Tommy to sleep, I would feel this relief, this sense of our relationship working. I was so glad to be a safe place for him, to hold him in my arms and feel his body relax. It meant a lot to me. I’m grateful to have always worked from home, to have never needed to depend very heavily on pumping. I liked nursing on demand. So I kept at it.

And so on for over two years. The food allergies went away on their own around 12 months so I got my favorite foods back. And we just kept nursing, as much as he needed. I may have tried to wean earlier, but Tommy has always been on the very low end of the growth curve, so our pediatrician recommended I keep nursing him to keep those calories and fats in his diet, especially since he wasn’t interested in replacing breast milk with cow’s milk. And I didn’t mind. For the past half year or so, he has mostly been nursing in conjunction with sleep — too busy running around and playing for much daytime nursing. But when he was sick or scared or sad, I had a way to soothe, comfort and heal him, and that felt wonderful. If there’s anything I’m sad to lose now that we’ve weaned, it’s that.

I’m planning to nurse our second baby too, if I can. After experiencing that nursing aversion, it feels a little scary to be honest, but I think the hormonal cocktail will have shifted enough to make it feel natural again. I’ve never been the kind of breastfeeding mom who was super proud to nurse in public, or who wanted to do a special breastfeeding photoshoot or something. I still feel a little funny about it, a little bashful — it’s a weird bodily experience, as much as I’ve enjoyed being able to do it. I’d been wanting to wean for a while, though. Really since learning I was pregnant again. And I was feeling so anxious about all the logistics — when, how, would other things stay the same? I was worried it would have bad ripple effects for Tommy’s sleep. I was worried it would cause a new postpartum mood disorder. I was worried he would revolt. But it turned out to be just normal. Natural. And intuitive — which is honestly how I’ve approached all aspects of parenting. I did all this research about various methods and plans, and then used none of those ideas. I just waited until I absolutely needed to not nurse anymore and an idea came to mind that I knew would make sense to my kid, and it worked for both of us. It had happened so gradually that I had no problems with engorgement or discomfort when we stopped. I’m glad I didn’t try to make it happen earlier, or differently. I’m glad I let it run its course for both of us, until the natural anti-climactic conclusion. Maybe that’s how other things I worry about will turn out too. Maybe I could allow myself to relax just a little bit more. Will I take this as a lesson? Probably not — but maybe!

one of the last times

Becoming a mother has been such a forceful sea-change in my life. Never before have I been forced to shift so quickly, so completely into new patterns, new motivations, new shapes for my body to take. How many hours have I spent nursing my son, how much of my energy or life force did I so freely give? How much of my creativity, my quick-mindedness, my ability to get-stuff-done did I forfeit in the name of nursing my baby? Like I said earlier, I can recognize that nursing wasn’t hard for me, but it was costly. Still, I wouldn’t trade it. And I would do it again and again. Like all of the caregiving actions of motherhood, in all their banal repetition, I can sense that they are forming me deep under my surface, in my core, beneath language, interpretation, poetry. I am different than I was before because I spent those 825 days nursing my son. In my church upbringing, there was lots of talk of “spiritual formation,” which often required reading books, attending classes, being discipled in some fashion. That never really resonated with me. Now I know, this is spiritual formation — my spirit being formed by slow, tender, ordinary devotion, day after day after day. This self-giving, this physical love, this bodily care, has done more to shift my soul than so many books I read, so many things I tried. I can feel that, and it’s thunderous, and I don’t have much more I can say about it because the words aren’t there. So many midnights, so many mornings, so much shared that is valuable beyond anything that can be bought, sold, or communicated. I’m breathlessly grateful to get to experience all these precious things, tired and fearful though I am.

To close, sharing again a poem I wrote early on in my breastfeeding experience. So wild that I’m about to start all over again, welcome a new baby, step into new ordinary devotion while continuing on at the same time. Motherhood is so intense, so workaday, so simple and complex. I remain myself inside of it, yet I am changed indelibly. Set your body as a table. Amen.

to nurse a baby is to sit still

and be eaten. to nurse a baby
is to curl into a new posture, to
hold a body atop your own. to
imagine yourself flowing, to leak,
to fountain accidentally, without
presence of mind, with presence, 
with patience, with gnashing of teeth. 
to nurse a baby is to watch the clock, 
to remember, to be a memory, 
and to be time too, little metronome, 
to fill and empty eternally. 
to nurse a baby is to be funny, 
to laugh, haha, at how strange it is 
to let someone drink, to be free, 
to hold a small hand and feel safe 
instead of scared, to suspend disbelief,
prepare a new feast, set your body as
a table, and make what you cannot see,
to nurse a baby is to give away 
something imaginary, something grown
in a garden in a dream.