Adventures in weaning

So in my long distant past I had these grand plans to let Cassia self-wean, expecting it would happen around the age of three. Then she was actually born and breastfeeding wasn't quite the blissful pinnacle of mothering I was expecting. Aside from initial difficulties, I just never really enjoyed it that much even though I certainly found my groove with it, was able to feed her without having to watch her every second, and was fine feeding in public. Unfortunately I had watched a breastfeeding video produced by the ABA on Cassia's first day, the catchphrase of which was "breastfeeding should be 100% pleasant and comfortable", and I think it set me up for disappointment. Breastfeeding was never 100% pleasant and comfortable for me.

Nevertheless, I decided to stick to my plan of letting her self-wean because it's not like I hated feeding, I just didn't like it that much either. And I knew that it would not do her any harm at all; on the contrary, it would do her lots of good for as long as it continued. And it's such an easy (read: lazy) mothering tool too!

Then when she was 14 months old I got pregnant again. Oh boy. Why had I never read about the pain of breastfeeding while pregnant before? (I probably had, somewhere, but it was far too theoretical for me to take much notice I guess.) It was as painful, if not more, than in those early days of her learning to latch on and it made me totally miserable. I contemplated weaning her, but certainly felt she wasn't ready for that, physically or emotionally. So I gritted my teeth and bore it a little longer, wondering what on earth I was going to do if she didn't self-wean during the pregnancy because I simply couldn't take the idea of tandem-feeding. Maybe I'd have to wean her at some point after all. Anyway, as the weeks went by and the pregnancy hormones left my body (not that I knew it at the time) the pain eased off and by the time I had the miscarriage it was already back to normal.

So I made a slight change in my original plans. I'd breastfeed until she self-weaned or I got pregnant again (because we were planning to start trying to conceive again when she was 32 months), with a progress review when she turned 2.

Plans, plans, plans. Pfft. I got pregnant again when she was about 21 months old and the way I confirmed it was by the incredible pain feeding was suddenly causing me. Maybe my memory is faulty, but it seemed even worse than last time. And it would hurt on-and-off for the duration of the feed, not just those first few awful sucks. And it didn't abate as the weeks went by either. There was no way I could continue this and keep my sanity. My supply was dropping dramatically because of the pregnancy anyway... and so finally, I made the decision to wean her for good. Quite a lot earlier than I would have ideally liked but that's life. I had no regrets, just found it an interesting exercise in "letting go".

As for the practical side of the process, I wanted to do it as gently as possible which meant taking a fairly long-term approach. She was feeding five times during the day and however many times overnight she would wake, which was usually two or three (sometimes, when I was lucky, just once). I decided to drop one of her day-feeds each week, and the first one to go was the mid-morning feed. Easy as pie. The next week I dropped the mid-afternoon feed. Not quite as easy but almost. Then I dropped her midday-naptime feed. Surprisingly easy. By this time I had coincidentally managed to night-wean her, as she'd begun sleeping through the night or occasionally waking once and being content to just eat food (usually fruit) before drifting back off. So I was down to feeding her twice a day -- once in the morning, and then before bed at night. The morning feed was the next to go, and that also wasn't too hard although by mid-morning sometimes she'd ask for booby and be a little upset when I said no. I'd just have to offer her some other food though and she'd be fine after that. And so came the final week -- down to feeding her once before bed and that was it! It also went remarkably well. As the week went by, and it was still killing me to feed her even just that once, I could hardly wait to finish. I spent the week telling Cassia that it was only four/three/two more days until she would have to say bye-bye to the boobies for good and at last, at last, AT LAST that final feed arrived. I was prudent enough to get a souvenir of it.

(I'm wearing shorts in this photo, I promise. You just can't see them.)

Well, that was 10 days ago. She has asked for booby several times since then and the intensity of her reaction to being told no has a direct relationship with the extent of her tiredness. I've had an emotionally turbulent time for unrelated reasons and she has been reflecting this back to me, which has been difficult, but I'm making a concerted effort to spend lots of time with her. Overall, I'd say the process has been amazingly smooth.

And yet it's obviously not quite as simple as all of that, because I feel compelled to reflect and write about it in this much detail. I do have some conflicting emotions about weaning, but not in ways I would have expected. I don't feel sad about it at all. At the moment, this photo produces more feelings of repulsion than sentimentality. (Ugh, get that child off my boob!) But I strongly suspect this feeling will fade over time and eventually I will look at it and think "awww". Maybe even "sniff". I also feel a strange regret that I can't feel compassion for other women who DO mourn the end of their breastfeeding relationship. They seem to be the ones in most need of a hug, not the ones like us who'd throw a party if anyone would come. (Hmmm, they used to hold "weaning parties" in days of old, didn't they? I'd never really thought about that before...) Perhaps the strongest feeling I'm experiencing is a sense of wistfulness over Cassia's growth and development. She hasn't been a baby for a long time, but she's making progress in leaps and bounds at the moment and I suppose there's that part of me which is aware that time moves on in spite of us.

So now I begin gearing up in preparation for feeding this next babe. I'm afraid it's going to hurt, that I'm going to hate it as much as I hated feeding Cassia towards the end. I don't anticipate the same sort of difficulties I had last time in getting breastfeeding established (though you never know for sure, of course), but right now my nipples are still sensitive enough, and the memories of the last few months are still fresh enough that I cringe at the thought of it. All part of the adventure of mothering, I guess.