Weaned, sniff

It's official. Ian is done nursing. He's done, done DONE I say! Like most things I'm finding about motherhood, it didn't match the experience in my head.

Oliver didn't nurse. He was tube-fed, then bottle-fed both formula and breastmilk while in the NICU the four days after he was born. We tried nursing...and failed at nursing. He did it ONE time while I had a team of lactation specialists with me. But he only drank from one side, and totally satisfied, left me in horrible pain on the other engorged side. When we got home, we tried and tried for a week, which doesn't sound long, but when every attempt ended in tears for both of us, and me feeling like an utter failure as a mother and a woman turning to my pump that took an hour to extract just a few ounces, I decided to formula-feed exclusively. Everything you hear about women feeling completely inadequate and "less-than" when they have real difficulty nursing totally applied to me. Part of being a mother was to nurse your baby, and if you couldn't, then you weren't "really" a mother. I didn't hold this standard for other women, just myself...I found out. My thought was, "I might as well be the babysitter since I'm doing the same job. I can't even feed him." My husband and mother tried comforting me by talking about the long history of nurse-maids, and how this was probably a common-enough problem to have a word for a surrogate "nurser" (is that even a word?) in every language. While tough, and going from 100% milk production to 0% overnight, it was also incredibly painful. I appreciated Nich being able to get up with Oliver at night to feed him, and that we could leave him with family for over an hour and not have to rush home to feed. I didn't REALLY understand that until I had Ian.

Baby Oliver with his feeding tubes and monitors just a few days old

Ian nursed. He was an immediate CHAMP. A natural. From hours after he was born and for months after, he was fast, clean, and super easy. With him, I figured I'd try to nurse and expected it not to work. When it did, and worked REALLY well, I was left with a quandry - to nurse or not nurse? It was weird to be the only one waking up with him at night, and weird that I was the only one who could feed him. So weird. I was suddenly tied to him more closely for his pure survival, and I suddenly realized this pressure. I worked so hard to rid myself of the wonderful ideas I had about nursing when I had Oliver, and now I saw the benefit of being able to bottle-feed anywhere, know if he was getting enough, and not worry if I was there or not when he got hungry (not that it mattered since I was always there anyway). During his first two weeks of life (while it was still a little painful) I toyed with the idea of trying both nursing and formula feeding. But he was so happy while nursing, playing with his little ears, that it was too hard to resist. It was so fast, so clean, and no pesky bottles. And he was such a good sleeper from the start, I only had to wake twice a night to feed him, and I could stay in bed and the natural hormones released allowed me to drift off right after he was back in his little cradle. So EASY. I decided I'd do it for six months.

Then he turned a year old...still nursing once or twice a day - at night and sometimes in the mornings too. I got greedy. While he was tiny, I started to enjoy the quiet, peaceful moments just he and I shared in the middle of the night, and our cuddle time in the mornings while we both sleepily woke up to start the day. By a year old, it was such a calming, connecting time before bedtime to fill his belly with a little snack and covering him with kisses. Bedtime is one of the few times I am guaranteed one-on-one time with each of my boys, and I covet those moments.

Now he's 15 months old, and he has weaned himself. He eats all solid foods, never made the transition to formula or a bottle - straight to sippy cups at 6 months old. He's oddly independent and already wants to try everything and do everything Oliver does. In the mornings, Ian is ready for fruit and waffles, not milk. Ok, we still had bedtime. Well now he just stares at me and giggles in anticipation of the bedtime ritual of songs and kisses and wants nothing to do with nursing anymore. What I first worried was going to be a difficult and possibly intrusive task, turned into this amazing connection and special time together, with a bond only he and I shared. I think I finally found the happy medium between nursing be EVERYTHING and nursing being scary. And now I miss it. I so miss it. Even though I was probably producing barely an ounce a day that last month or so, I miss it. My baby is officially not a baby anymore. Sigh.