Mendolonium

The first time I ever nursed Thomas was about 10 minutes after he was born.  We were both, naturally, completely exhausted and inexperienced, but took to it instantly.  So well, in fact, that I spent the next five hours after his birth switching him from side to side, left and right, nursing all the while until finally he fell asleep.  I should have known then that he thought nursing was, without exaggeration, the greatest thing in the universe.  Everyone warned me about how hard breastfeeding would be, but honestly, I found it pretty darn easy.  It was good that I did, because Thomas nursed all the time. I kept a log of Thomas’ nursing, sleeping, and well, pooping for his first few months of life and there are many, many days he nursed on the order of fifteen times – never less than a dozen.  We now know that the insane frequency of nursing was, in part, due to reflux, however, at the time I just knew that nursing fixed my fussy, crying baby so that’s what I did.  We nursed everywhere:  on the corner of Walnut and Lake in front of the grocery store, in front of the yarn store on Wilson when the stroller got a flat tire, on airplanes, at Disneyland,  in restaurants, dozens of times in Target alone.

All those same people and books that cautioned me about how hard breastfeeding would be also advised setting small goals for nursing:  nurse for the first six weeks, then the first three months, etc.  I scoffed at those goals and secretly vowed to nurse Thomas until he was an absolute minimum of a year, with the intention of going until at least age two if we were both amenable.  Thomas was more than amenable, and his second birthday, with me four months pregnant, passed with nary a thought of stopping.  I was concerned whether nursing might provoke some jealousy with the new baby nursing all the time, as newborns do, and Thomas restricted to a couple of times a day.  But I was pleasantly surprised that nursing the baby seemed to please Thomas immensely.  The first time Thomas noticed Henry nursing after he was born, Thomas clapped his hands together and exclaimed excitedly, “He’s nursing!”

While I wouldn’t change a thing about our nursing relationship, recently the time had come for me to be done.  The reasons aren’t important here, but over the past couple of months I have grown more and more ready to stop while Thomas has shown no signs of letting go.  The end of nursing will be hard on both of us.  Thomas has never been particularly fond of physical contact, often wriggling away from hugs or recoiling when Jeff or I stroke his hair, but he would always nurse.  While one might think that he will replace nursing with other cuddling – I don’t think he will.  Instead we (Thomas and I) have decided that I will read him a story before nap and bed times – as well as a story any other time he is feeling sad during this transition.  While the idea of a story was all well and good in theory – it has been tough on Thomas in practice when we went from two nurses a day to one several weeks ago.  I kept telling him that we would be done with nursing all together soon, now that he was three years old and he would counter with “four years old”.  He would point out that the boys next door still nurse; I would point out that the boy across the street does not.  While the generally proffered weaning strategy of “Don’t offer, don’t refuse” may work for some toddlers – it didn’t stand a chance with Thomas and his perfect memory.  When we would skip a nursing session (if for example, I was out during his nap time), he would remember and ask for another nurse in the evening because “we forgot”.   I would have been waiting a long time to let Thomas self wean; a LONG, LONG time – like geologic time.   In the end, the only way we were going to stop was for me to just pick a day.  The last week has been particularly tough so I decided that today, the last day of the year, would be a fitting end for the closure of the nursing era for Thomas.  And so it was.

I told him it would be the last time and when he was done I told him I loved him.  He responded with “I love you too Mama.”  Then he quietly said, “Thank you.  Thank you Mama.”  I asked him what for and he replied, “Thank you for all the nursey.”  You are very welcome, my little boy.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 12:23 am and is filed under Me, Thomas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.