January 18, 2009: End of an Era

Yes. This is indeed what it looks like. I never thought I'd be one of "those moms," the ones who shared photos of themselves breastfeeding. I never thought I'd even want pictures of myself breastfeeding. Heck, up until just about 5 weeks before Caitrin was born, I didn't think I could breastfeed.

And yet, I did. And I am. And I do. Sadly, Sunday marked the end of the road, hopefully just for a while. When Caitrin was born, I never set a goal for how long we'd nurse, like some mothers do. I was just so surprised that I was allowed to do it, and thrilled that my baby took to it so well, that I decided we'd do it for as long as we both still enjoyed it, with the small caveat of having it in mind to stop before she was old enough to talk to her friends about it. Funny, but life had a bit different scenario in mind. Evidently, I am one of (apparently) few women who cannot get pregnant while nursing even the slightest bit. I'm letting a huge cat out of the bag here I realize, but we've been trying for another baby since early October. Five cycles now with no luck. Caitrin was conceived on Cycle Number Three. There's a lot of detail I won't share here, but the long and short of it seems to be that nursing might well be the culprit behind our difficulty this time. I hope that's all.

So it had been breaking my heart, but I'd started to seriously consider weaning Caitrin at eighteen months, if by then we're not pregnant. I wanted to be one of "those moms" who can nurse one all the way through the pregnancy with the next. But I'd started to consider that we've nursed for a really long time already, all things considered. A 2005 survey published by the CDC reported that among mothers and infants who start out breastfeeding, 73% are still doing so at seven days old, 57% at three months, 43% at nine months, 21% at twelve months, and 7% at eighteen months. We've definitely stuck it out far longer than most...so long, in fact, that I had started to get weird looks from some of my girlfriends when the question of "when did you wean?" came up, and their answers were "6 months" or "9 months" and mine was "I still haven't." I had reconciled myself to the eighteen months idea and was planning how we'd celebrate our "last time" with pictures and video so that a poor, weepy mother would have a memento of this amazing time.

And then my kid changed the rules. Don't they always. She is cutting molars. Why did no one tell me that this is hell?! She has also picked up a teensy, tiny bit of her dad's stomach virus, sans fever, thank the Lord. Yesterday, just as we were about to feed her lunch, she threw up spectacularly all over her high chair tray. Going on her pediatrician's past advice, we withheld solids for the rest of the day and just gave her Pedialyte. I didn't even realize that I gave it to her at bedtime instead of nursing, until she was fast asleep and I was downstairs rinsing out her cup. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: oh my God, I just weaned my baby. Once the panic hit, I told Sean what I had done. "Don't worry," he assured me, "you'll be able to get right back to it tomorrow night." I suspected otherwise; we've been just nursing at bedtime for over a month now, and some nights I hadn't even let down anymore. In other words, there wasn't a whole lot of milk left to begin with.

Today was a nasty, fussy, rotten day for my girl. Between her teeth and her tummy, she just couldn't seem to get comfortable and clung to one or the other of us all day. We took it very easy on her at dinner, opting for applesauce and baby cereal. She ate well considering how yucky she feels, but as I got up to put her dishes in the sink she barfed all over her dad. At that point we knew she just needed to go to bed, so we cleaned her up and brushed her teeth and put her down. I didn't dare even offer to nurse since it had been just 15 minutes since she got sick. She went down without a fuss and I can only pray that the two remaining molars break through overnight and her tummy settles. So it would appear that we are done, no fanfare, no souvenirs but those I hold in my memory. And the only one crying about it, of course, is me.