The Last Breakfast

Each time I broached the subject, she chose to ignore me.

“Sophia, in a few days mommy is going on a trip. She’s going to take an airplane to Florida. You’ll stay with daddy (this evoked a broad smile). But during this time, mommy won’t be giving you milk. And when I come back we’ll be all done with mommy’s milk.”

I know she heard me. The kid doesn’t miss a trick. She can be deeply engrossed in playing drama queen, coloring her hands, or reading a book…but will recite back to me bits of overheard conversations had with other people.

“Do you understand what mommy is telling you?”

Crickets.

I wanted it to be a mutual decision, but the way things were going, it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon. Oh, there were certainly times when she woke up and didn’t immediately ask for my milk:

“I woke up. I want to paint!” Or

“Play with pegs! Play with pegs!”

And there are times when her babysitter or her father puts her down and she knows they have no milk to offer her.

But, if she was tired, sick, or just looking for a little snuggle time…she’d ask. It had been my rule for the last couple of weeks to only give when she asked. And, she WAS asking less than she used to. But still, she asked.

So, on that final morning, when I fetched her from her crib, head buzzing from a sleepless night, I took her into my bed and told her it was the last time.

“I want milky.” She told me.

“Okay, Sophia, but this is the last time.”

I had a romantic notion of what the last time would be like. Full of emotion. A sense of heightened connection. The bitter-sweetness of saying goodbye to one phase of our relationship and the dawn of a new one.

But for the first few minutes she kept slapping at her legs as she drank. It was distracting.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“I’m playing with my legs,” she said, matter-of-factly, carefully putting words the together to form a sentence.

I tried to focus on the thought of it being the last session and my mind wandered, the way it always does when I’m feeding her. Where were my sunglasses? Did I leave Kevin the emergency phone number? She pulled off, and I snapped back to the present.

“Another one,” she demanded, sitting up and pointing to my other breast. Oh yes. It’s time, I thought as we switched places in bed.

And it ended just the way it always did. Abruptly. With Sophia sated and ready to move on to the next thing.

I, too, am ready to move to the next thing.

Maybe.



Epilogue: Lean, Mean and (finally) Weaned

Sophia spotted me at baggage claim from about sixty feet away, in a cinematic moment she ran to me, arms outstretched, face a-glow, “MOMMY MOMMY MOMMY.” We embraced tightly.

Oh how I missed her. Oh how that hug pained me. Tears sprang to my eyes as she crushed my engorged, sore breasts to my chest.

Later, I checked in with Kevin, “Did she ask for…you-know?”

“Not once.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been Kevin’s fear that she would tantrum for the one thing he could not give her while I was gone. But no, she had understood that both me AND my breasts were absent, and settled for the water and cows milk he gave her. I had hoped that there was no turning back at this point. That she was ready to move on. But that night after she had changed into her pjs, brushed her teeth, and read a book, she turned to me and asked for milk.

It was the moment of truth.

“We talked about this Soph. There’s no more milk. Milky went away.” A little white lie. Actually, I read that your breasts can produce milk up to six months after weaning—which wasn’t doing much for my resolve. Neither was the pain of engorgement.
She burst into tears! “Mommy! I want milky! I want MILKY!” My heart ached. My breasts ached.

I looked to Kevin for direction. Kevin was Switzerland. “I’ll support whatever you want to do.” And then he was my psychologist/husband, “but you did tell her no.”

Ugh. The worst thing you can do to a behaviorist is to suggest to her that she might be sending mixed messages. It was all I needed to hear.

To Sophia, “I love you, Sweetheart.”

To Kevin, “Could you put her to bed for me?”

Sophia and I both sobbed as he lay her down to sleep. She was quiet within two minutes. It took me about two hours to pull myself together.

“I don’t know why I decided to stop!” I told Kevin. And it was true. I couldn’t pinpoint a reason. Was it because of what I was afraid everyone else was thinking? Was it because I had set an arbitrary deadline? Was it because I was ready?

Damn reason.

It was a full two weeks before my body reverted to its original form. I agonized through clogged ducts, fear of mastitis, and more waffling. But, I remained committed to my decision, and one day I woke up and was staring at my pre-pregnancy-self in the mirror. Deflated. Oh yeah. That’s what they looked like.

Sophia tried one last time when we were cuddling in bed and reading, activities that have replaced the first feeding of the day. “I want milky,” she tested, gesturing to my chest so there would be no mistaking what she meant. I tried a new angle…something I had read somewhere. “Soph, when you were a baby, mommy made special milk that’s just for babies. But you’re a big girl now. You’re two years old. You can do so many big-girl things like drink milk from a cup, eat with a fork, walk….” I listed off all the things she could do as a big girl.

This time there were no tears. From either of us.

Sophie silently digested this information, slid of the bed, suggested, “Play, downstairs?” And we both moved on to whatever was to come next.

Hard Habit to Break

There are probably some thoughts that are better off never put into words, let alone on paper. Ones that are too intensely personal, not for public consumption. The kinds of thoughts that inspire judgment even before they have left your lips.

And yet, I feel compelled, not just to speak them, not just to write them, but to share these most personal thoughts with whomever is willing to read them. And so, whether this was a tantalizing prologue or a thinly veiled caveat, I’ll just say it:

I cannot bring myself to give up breastfeeding.

If you ever wondered what is going on in the minds of those women who hoist 8-year-old children into their laps to suckle at their empty-sock boobs, you might get a little insight here. This is how it went down last night:

We fed Sophia too late, again, which meant that she was almost comatose by the end of dinner, alternately staring off into space, giggling hysterically, and begging for bed.

We went through our usual routine: I tried to pin her down long enough to remove her clothing as she gleefully rolled all over (and occasionally off of) my bed. Once caught, Sophia lay rapt, as Kevin sat at her head, narrating the events of the day, while I did the dirty work, meticulously cleansing each crease. Next, Kevin wrestled her into her monkey pj’s, while I left to get the implements of torture: her toothbrush and toothpaste. Upon my return, I recited a reworked line from Shel Silverstein, “Mommy’s a little bit crazy; she thinks a babysitter is supposed to sit upon the baby.” And with that, I straddled Sophia and brushed each quadrant of her mouth for a count of ten, amid tears and protests. Dismounting, I grabbed her fluoride drops, or what I have deemed “Screamy Mimi” (screamy, because she screamed bloody murder the first hundred times I tried to give it to her, mimi because that’s her word for medicine). Sophie stood up on my bed, wobbling and falling into me, opening her mouth like a baby bird, and sucking the medicine down. Then, she turned to her father and ordered, “Bye bye daddy,” shifted her gaze to me and announced, “Milky time,” hyperventilating with joy, as she has done since she was an infant, when I unhooked my bra.

Finally calm in my arms, Sophia drank a little and, in between draughts, chatted a little. On this night she was counting, “five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” and surprised me by continuing on, “eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen,” she paused, “eleventeen?” she asked. “Twenty,” I whispered, and she resumed her counting, “twenty-one, twenty two….”

This is bliss. My baby, both as she was and as she is. Infant and child. Dependent and wild.

I have read accounts by some mothers who have kept breastfeeding because they were afraid their child would not be able to cope without it. Or because it was easier than facing the repercussions of not breastfeeding. Or because they felt guilty taking it away. I have heard women complain that their bodies are no longer their own. That their children lift up their shirts in public demanding num-nums. And I have witnessed children, in the flesh, take full advantage of their mother’s open shirt policies, children who feel entitled to take a nip when they please (or whenever they need soothing).

This is not our story. In the beginning, when it hurt like hell, every day I had to recommit to breastfeeding Sophia. And even after eight weeks, when it finally no longer hurt but I was still feeding her every 2-3 hour around the clock, I continued to take it day by day, with a shining goal of six months.

Then one day, Sophia looked up at me and smiled with full recognition that I was the one connected to the breast. It was a smile of gratitude, pleasure and love. A rare, transcendent moment.

By the time six months rolled around, Sophie and I had established a rhythm. Breastfeeding was an oasis of calm in our day. I decided to continue exclusively for two more months. When I started her on solids at 8½ months my supply instantly dropped, and I panicked. I wouldn’t feed Sophia “real food” until after I had nursed her. I pumped. I took fenugreek until my sweat smelled like maple syrup. If only I could make it to a year. And then we hit the year mark, last November. The holy grail of breastfeeding; when all women finally have permission to stop. But by then, I was in it for the long haul. The guidelines said we should do it as long as it was mutually satisfying…and it was. It is.

So now, the two year mark looms before me. The date I set as the end, the very end. But as the end approaches, my sense of reluctance grows. I am still waiting for a twinge of resentment to surge forth. For it to feel like a chore. For me to want my body back.

I don’t. Breastfeeding remains a precious time between Sophie and me. A time when she stops. When I stop. And we’re both fully present for each other.

I’m sure we’d be able to find another way of capturing this time together. But why? Other than my fear of what everyone thinks about it, I can’t think of a single good reason.

EBFing

We have been held prisoners in the Jiffy Lube waiting room for over an hour. Sophia has briefly manipulated and discarded every toy that I brought along, we’ve scoured OK! magazine for shots of celebrity babies, and I’ve exhausted my supply of organic cheddar bunnies. She is wilting. Sophia looks up at me, or rather that area just below my neck, points to her own chest in an invented sign and pleads, “mi, mi, mi.”

Not just yet, I whisper, feeling the eyes of all four men in the room upon us. When we get home. Soon.

My name is Melissa, and I am an extended breast feeder (EBFer). For those unfamiliar with the term, this means that I have chosen to continue to breastfeed Sophia beyond a year.

There is some irony in this. I can remember years ago, before I was a mother, before Kevin and I were even married, I ran into an acquaintance on the street who told me she was headed to a La Leche League meeting. Because she from Spain, I assumed it was a ex-pat mothers’ support group. But when I mentioned the encounter to another friend, she rolled her eyes and said, Oh, THOSE PEOPLE. They’re the ones who believe in breastfeeding ten-year-olds. And we agreed, if a baby could ask for it, it was probably time to give it up.

Years later, but still before I had Sophia, a very respected colleague and dear friend of mine confided that her four-year-old was still breastfeeding. I know the shock registered on my face. I am ashamed to say I made an inappropriate joke, because I didn’t know how else to react. I didn’t understand why someone would even consider this. I assumed that it was attachment parenting gone wild.

Now, here I was, 17 months post-partum, in the Jiffy Lube with my hyper-verbal toddler requesting the goods. How did I get here?

1. I don’t mind sharing, in fact, I feel compelled to share that breastfeeding was a hard-won success for me. As “natural” as it may be, in the beginning both of us had no idea how to do it. Certainly, it didn’t help that I hemorrhaged after the birth, developed a rare hematoma, and lost a ton of blood. Because of the trauma, my milk came in late, and Sophia lost over 10% of her bodyweight before things got flowing. Throughout this period, I pumped to stimulate production, which led to a surplus that rendered me able to feed every hungry baby on the block. When she nursed, Sophia choked and sputtered as the milk shot down her throat. She clamped down on my nipples to stem the flow until I was cracked and sore and bleeding. I cried every time she latched on, with pain and frustration that I was unable to do this very simple thing. It required every bit of tenacity I could muster to see it through.

One saintly lactation consultant and eight weeks later, Sophia and I found our groove. When the pain finally lifted, it was one of the most deeply satisfying experiences I have ever had. I was feeding my child with food produced by me. When Kevin would come home at night and we would exchange stories of the day, I would begin with, “I kept our baby alive with my body. What did YOU do today?” I take great pride in the fact that I stuck it out for her sake—not in holier-than-thou martyry sort of way, but in a I-kicked-breastfeeding-ass kind of way.

2. I would never continue breastfeeding simply for my sake, or jut because I worked so hard to get to this point. I’ve always thought that if Sophia initiated weaning, I’d go with the flow. And so, as she’s grown busier with life, she’s generally less interested in breastfeeding, and we’ve cut back. I don’t whip out the boob every time she gets a distressed look on her face. I don’t nurse her to sleep. It doesn’t replace food or all fluids. And I very rarely initiate. She generally asks first thing in the morning, once during the day, and once as part of her nighttime routine, and I oblige. Fact is, she likes it too. Sometimes, as she’s drinking she pulls back and exclaims, “Mmmmmm!” I like knowing that she thinks my milk is delicious.

3. It’s also about health. I was sick with chronic ear infections throughout my toddler and preschool years. So was Kevin. I wound up having three myringotomies. We both had our adenoids removed. The mantra we heard in our birthing and breastfeeding classes was that breastfeeding reduced the incidents of ear infections. Ditto for diarrhea. We hope that Sophia will not have to go through what we did.

4. And then there’s vanity. You just can’t beat the calorie burn.

So, as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends, Sophia and I will continue to breastfeed as long as it is mutually desirable, which might be next week or it might be months from now. But one thing I am certain of: I am sorry for having judged others for the choices they made.