I officially stopped breast feeding you yesterday. It was a perfect, sun-drenched, baby blue sky type of day and I was putting you down for your afternoon nap. It was a nice way to say "goodbye" to this lovely adventure called breastfeeding.
The reasons why yesterday was THE DAY are many. First, you don't seem to need it anymore now that you are eating many different types of foods and drinking cow's milk. And, really, you have already weaned yourself...just taking to the boob for a few minutes before you sleep. Secondly, I will be going back to work soon and need to stop anyway. Third, I made it to fourteen months. My goal was a year and I breast fed you for a glorious sixty days longer than I anticipated...so, it seemed like this was as good a time as any. And, and, and I was going to the dermatologist because mommy's skin is like that of a pizza-faced teen and I knew that the derm would inject my cystic acne with cortisone (God I hope you have your father's milky perfect complexion...so far, so good) and I knew that I couldn't breastfeed you after that. Plus, there is the matter of the ulcer I've had since I was three months pregnant that I was told I couldn't treat until I was done breastfeeding. So, alas, it came time for mommy to get sorted on the inside and out. And so, yesterday became the last time.
I was singing to you, as I do. This time it was a mix of "You are my sunshine", "Edelweiss" and a made up song called "Izzy Girl" that is reminiscent of a Supreme's tune. I looked at your face while you drank and wondered if you knew it was the last time, too. You looked even more angelic that normal--which, c'mon, is pretty angelic. You would stop drinking after a few chugs and smile, my nipple still in your mouth. It made me laugh. And that made you laugh. I wondered if you would miss it the way, I knew, I would. You resumed drinking. I tried to memorize everything about the moment. How the room was a pleasant temperature with the breeze from your open window gently providing a little cool. The breeze had the faint small of jasmine that your dad planted when we first moved into the house five years ago. The jasmine is quite impressive now, filling our yard and pleasing our noses whenever we step foot onto our back deck. You were wearing the super soft pink polka dot ensemble and while I fed you, you playfully pulled off your socks, as you do. Then you took your naked feet and put them up to my mouth and I immediately began to kiss and nibble them. More laughter from us both.
I tried to hide my tears from you. I sang as pretty as I could but my voice kept cracking with my sobs. You and I have been experiencing so many "firsts" and it pained me to be experiencing a "last". There was a heartache in me that was bittersweet. Because I feel that it was one of the great privileges of my life to be able to breastfeed you. I've had so many girlfriends that have had trouble with it so I feel ridiculously grateful to have been able to do it. To have done it as long as I did. To have been your only source of nutrition. I loved every moment of it, baby. Even the pumping in the car on the way home from meetings. The checking my milk with fancy alcohol detection strips on the occasional night I'd have a bottle of beer to make sure the milk was safe for you to drink. The pain when the detection strip told me that I had to toss the milk I pumped and I had to watch the liquid gold make it's way down the sink. The waking up at odd hours to pop a boob into your mouth so that we could both go back to the land of Nod. It was all perfection.
How is this a lesson? Well, I suppose the lesson is: "Cherish every moment". I know. It's so cliche even I want to vomit all over myself. And assholes use cliches instead of forming original thought so we must do better. But every cliche is a cliche for a reason, eh? Perhaps behind, even the cheesiest ones, there is a morsel of something real and wise. Or perhaps the lesson is that sometimes the things you fear end up being some of your favorite things in life. Because I wasn't sold on breast feeding, if I'm being completely honest. Oh, I was committed to doing it. Was dead set on doing it for a year. But I am not someone that likes their nipples being touched and played with (oh, baby, I'm so sorry on some level that you now know that)...and I feared and did not look forward to breastfeeding. And here we are, fourteen months later, and I will miss it terribly. And I it will be one of the things I look forward to when I have the next baby--your little brother or sister...a few years from now.
Yes, let's make that the lesson. Sometimes the things you fear may end up being some of the best things that ever happen to you.
I love you tons and tons,
Mommy
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