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by Mary Jessica Hammes
May 24, 2010
I awoke suddenly to his small face peering into mine.
“I dreamed I was having milk,” Tommy said, his voice shaking a little. “And I’m so glad because I love having milk!”
“Having milk” was what my 3-year-old son called nursing, an activity we had ended three weeks ago. And he was still talking about it.
“Um, are you thirsty?” I asked. “Would you like some water?”
He said he would, so I stumbled out of bed while he climbed into it. It was still very early and we snuggled together for a while after he drank his water. He didn’t mention breastfeeding again that morning.
But he hasn’t stopped talking about it completely. Every once in awhile he’ll bring it up. He has started a new thing, too: lifting up my shirt just a little bit to passionately smash his face into my bare stomach. He calls it “hugging my belly.” I wonder if he misses the skin-to-skin contact of nursing. Or maybe he just really likes squishing his face into my post-baby belly. It probably feels like a giant pillow to him.
In any case, every wistful mention of “having milk”—whether he means it or is just playing around—feels like a punch in my gut. Every time, I wonder if weaning was the right choice, if he had been ready. If I had been ready.
To be honest, he technically weaned himself, although I had gently pushed him in that direction. He had only been nursing in the mornings, often when I was half-asleep, and I was fine with that. But my son was gigantic and gangly, several heads taller than any other child his age, and his idea of cuddling while nursing was becoming painful and annoying. Also, I could tell my milk supply had significantly decreased, to the point where I wondered if he got anything at all some days. I was ready to bring this journey to a close.
So we talked about it.
“You know,” I said, “My body is making less milk now. Soon it will stop making milk completely. But that’s OK, because you don’t really need it anymore, do you?”
“Nah,” he said, but it was hard to tell if he was listening.
“I think you’re going to stop nursing soon,” I said. “Are you OK with that?”
“Yeah,” he said.
My husband planned to take Tommy out of town for a few days, just the two of them. It would be the first time I’d ever slept away from my son. The reasons were numerous—they’d visit family; I’d finish a big writing project in peace—but the obvious idea was that weaning would actually happen.
We talked about that too.
“You’re not going to have milk when you’re in Savannah, you know,” I said. “And when you come back, I’m not going to be making any more milk. Are you OK with that?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
But then, two days before they left, he stopped nursing by himself in the morning. He asked me, “Have you stopped making milk?”.
I didn’t know what to say, but finally settled on, “Yes.” I felt half-deceiving, half-truthful. This was a kid who decided on his own that Santa didn’t exist, and when he asked us, we confirmed it. We had always been honest with him.
“Can I have some soy milk in a cup?” he asked. He didn’t sound upset at all.
And so they left. And I finished my writing project and enjoyed the wonders of a quiet house. While they were away, my husband said he mentioned “having milk” just once—he said “it made him a little sad” to stop, but he didn’t seem very affected as he said the words. In fact, he had a great visit with his Nana, who happily indulged my son’s desire to spend hours watching boats on River Street or the cogs and gears of taffy-pulling machines in the candy shops.
I thought he’d forget about breastfeeding completely, that he wouldn’t mention it to me after his return. Isn’t that what you read? The kid stops nursing and a day or so later, the memory of ever having done it all is wiped clean from their young, malleable minds. Life goes on. Breastfeeding becomes a sweet memory.
Not my kid. Every once in awhile, he’ll wake up in the morning, clamber into our bed (if he’s not there already) and say, dramatically, “Oh, I wish I could have milk.” (His pathos disappears upon an offer of water or almond milk, leading me to believe he’s simply thirsty and slightly manipulative.) Occasionally at bedtime, when it’s my turn to tuck him in, he’ll mention it again—despite the fact he stopped nursing at night ages ago.
I was talking on the phone about this to a friend recently, about weaning and guilt and wondering whether I did the right thing. She told me something very clear that I heard even over the din of my son hollering in the background: A lot of mothers who wean—whether it’s at 3 weeks, 3 months, 3 years—wonder and worry. They aren’t sure if they could have done more. They second-guess themselves. Instead, why not frame it like this: This is how it happened. This is how you weaned your son.
So, this is how I weaned my son. I breastfed him in the hospital right after his birth, marveling at his quiet alertness. I breastfed him in those early weeks, when I was so sleep-deprived that I was miserable and wondered what I had done to ruin my life so thoroughly. I breastfed him when I finally knew that no, it had not been a mistake, that I loved this small creature more than life. I breastfed him through teething and illness and first steps and first words. I breastfed him until we stopped breastfeeding.
And that’s how it happened.
Mary Jessica Hammes is an Athens, Georgia-based writer, trapeze instructor, knitter, gardener, comic book enthusiast, and hula hooper. She is mom to Tommy.
Copyright ©2012 baby gooroo, inc.
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