I know it's not always that easy. I've seen friends struggle with low supply and difficult latch. I'll just tell you straight up, I have National Geographic boobs. Small, with enormously long nipples. My nursing nipples can nip through four layers. Nothing stops them. On the bright side, only a baby absolutely determined not to nurse could miss those suckers (aha). They look exactly like the nipples that come with Gerber bottles. I kid you not. I would take a picture, but you know, I don't need that kind of traffic.
With Garrett, I fell hook line and sinker, weighted down by all my first-time mom insecurities, for the whole, formula is evil it shall not pass thy baby's lips line. I struggled a little. Not with nursing so much as with the time and space restrictions. I couldn't go anywhere without the baby. I hated pumping. (I still hate pumping, I'd rather tote the baby everywhere.) I worked for six months and I would skip lunch to dash to his nanny's house and feed him so that I didn't have pump.
I don't want to paint nursing as a negative experience. I adore it. I love the ease of it. The deep, physical attachment with my child. I love the portability, the lack of mess, the lack of need for sterile bottles or accouterments of any sort. I love the noises they make, the little sucking sounds, the nuzzling and routing. I love a milk-drunk baby, out cold in my arms with the little-old-man-contented face on. As they grow, I love the smiles. I love the way an alert, four-month-old baby pauses to survey the room and then snuggles back in, smiling up at me, his little tongue already curled into a tube, ready for his next sip.
My favorite and sharpest memories of Garrett's infancy are lying beside him, pressed together like lovers for his early morning nurse. I can hear him gulping milk greedily after six hours of sleep. I can almost feel the pleasurable sensation of the release in pressure, the lessening of the ache as he drinks. I remember the equatorial sun, never failing to make its appearance over the cliff line outside our bedroom window at six in the morning. It hit the foot of the bed and then the light sheet and then my legs and finally his face where I stroked it gently as he drank. That might be the most content I have ever been, with no where else to be, nothing more important to do, no other children I was ignoring, Matt happy to watch us and doze in the heat.
It's restrictive, though. The lack of freedom wore on me. At exactly a year, I poured cow's milk into a sippy cup and said, here you go kid, that whole boobie thing, it's over. I didn't mourn it. We were heading to Haiti and our family was about to grow. I felt satisfied that we'd both gotten what we needed from the experience.
I nursed Quinn until he was eight-months-old not even close to exclusively. I still hated pumping and I couldn't imagine, with two other kids under two, not having some freedom to escape, some time that was my own. We bought formula. It felt almost laughable that I'd refused to buy any before then. I nursed him primarily, but when it was inconvenient or I needed a break or I had plans I could just...leave. It was good. I was a more confident mother and with confidence came the ability to think for myself. There are as many ways to feed a baby as to skin that poor proverbial cat and if the baby was happy, well hallelujah, pour me another glass of wine because he should sleep for five hours.
I didn't mourn the end with Quinn either. I went to my sister's bachlorette party. I tried to pump, it didn't really work, he didn't really care...and done. We wanted another baby and so I wasn't all that sad about jump starting my ovulation.
I thought I would want to hold onto this phase with Nate until the bitter end. He takes formula, don't misunderstand me, I'll never unring that little bell of occasional freedom, but I thought I'd want to nurse him for as long as he wanted to nurse. Until we looked into each other's eyes and both thought, wow weird, alrighty then.
I don't. I both adore it and I'm tired of it. I sit here typing this with one hand and I cherish his solid weight in my other arm, his little llama lips on my nipple, at the same time I think in the back of my mind, how much longer? Is six months long enough? He takes a bottle, he had formula at three-weeks-old when I shoved him at my long-suffering mother and jetted to Chicago for the weekend. I have a girls' weekend planned in two months and I don't want to pump. I don't own a pump. I've been playing with the idea of weaning him before then. He'll have started solids. He'll be able to hold a bottle in his chubby little hand. It would work.
Yes, my motives are purely selfish. Have I mentioned that I hate pumping? My reservations are purely selfish as well. Will I regret it? Will I look back and wish I had nursed him as long as possible? That I'd held onto this fleeting baby phase as long as possible? Or am I, four kids and five years later, just a realist? Nursing will end. We will reach the end of his babyhood and step off into toddlerdom whether I watch it slip through my tightly clasped hands or I give it a pat on the bottom on my way to catch a plane.
I don't have a neat wrap up for this one. I don't have a neat wrap up for five years straight of pregnancy and babies and nursing either. I have so much. I am not complaining. I guess, this time around, whether I choose it or not, whether I'm ready or not, whether I'm a little tired of it or not, I do have to mourn.
E&E Tally: 12642 wordsBlog posts: 18/30
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