Weaning

It has been a challenging 9 days and I think part of it is unmet expectations on my part (of the timing) and sudden hormone changes. Migraines this week as my body adjusts haven't helped me feel any better.
I will let these excerpts from another mom's written experience (found on LLL's website) describe some of the emotions I've been feeling about letting go. Though weaning has been so much more abrupt and sooner than I'd ever hoped, I am so thankful for the almost 16 months of this special bond that Sophia and I have shared. I can rest easy knowing it was her initiative and not for a lack of offer on my part. I'm so glad I cherished each time I was given, the weight of our day erased as she lay blissfully asleep in my arms.

"We breastfeed in silence. We breastfeed in dialogue. We breastfeed asleep. We breastfeed in a chair at the end of the day until all the light is gone from the room. I hold him, knowing, wistfully, that he will never remember this. But somehow, I feel in my intuitive heart that this will have helped shape his perceptions of himself and me.

I see how he finds his peace. Orders his world. I see how blissful it is to sit with him at dawn and nurse him into another day. I see how breastfeeding him for comfort has made him more comfortable in general. More patient. More respectful of my needs. More able to calm himself. More centered. Happy.

I see how it has made me more patient, more centered, able to calm myself. I see the look of deep knowingness in his eye, as if we've been walking the planet together for a couple of hundred years. I see how breastfeeding has become part of our rhythm, our rhyme, our understanding of each other. How it has given our relationship a whole other layer of connectedness. And how that connectedness has influenced my parenting choices, how I perceive him, and how he responds to me.

I can also see how he won't go down to sleep at night with anybody else but me. At least, not at this point. Not now. Not yet.

I used to think of breastfeeding as the essential connection between us. I couldn't imagine, and sometimes worried about, how we would relate to each other after he was no longer breastfeeding. It was part of our language. Our understanding of each other.

Now, in retrospect, I realize that nursing is only one aspect of motherhood. One way of connecting. One way of comforting. On the other side of the nursing journey now, motherhood continues, of course. And, in some ways, for me, it is just beginning again.

In letting my son decide when to stop nursing-when to let go-I have learned about letting go, too. About letting go of one thread while holding on to others. Letting go, letting go, until more threads are loosened, unraveled, untethered, like a dancing kite that has set itself free."

Lu Hanessian
Englewood NJ USA
From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 21 No. 1, January-February 2004, pp. 4