Nursling

3.13.12

12 months ago I was contemplating what it would be like to have a baby, a daughter, and what it would be like to nurse her. At the beginning of my pregnancy I decided that I was going to nurse because it was “natural” and I am all about natural. I worried about what it would be like if we had a boy, nursing him and how weird and unnatural that would be. After we found out we were having a girl I was a little more at ease. Growing up I had very little contact with babies so as foreign as babies seemed to me, nursing was alien.

When I was 9 months pregnant hoping to go into labor soon, I had a dream. I was at the church that I grew up in and I was no longer pregnant, I didn’t necessarily have a baby but I wasn’t pregnant. I went to the nursery and I was handed a brown skinned baby that was not really breathing and didn’t even seem alive. I carried around this little baby “doll” by the ankle through the halls and into the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and then looked at the baby and was troubled by its lethargy. I put the puny, skinny baby to my breast and nursed it and it came alive. It was alive and happy and healthy all of a sudden. When I woke up from this dream I was totally at peace with nursing my baby and I started reading about it and studying so that I would be prepared. There was nothing weird about it anymore.

When I did give birth to Ariah the nurses stuck her on my breast whether I thought it was weird or not, there was no thinking or contemplation going on. It was the most natural, normal, sweet, fulfilling, human experience I have ever had. Ariah was a champ at latching on (sorry for all the nursing lingo) and she made it so easy on me. It was strange to get used to chapped nipples and sore breasts but it honestly never mattered, my baby was being fed and my body was responding to the demand. My boobs weren’t boobs, they were lifelines for nourishing my baby girl. I was so proud and happy and fulfilled.

After a few months I decided to breastfeed my little nursling for a year. Over the past 11 months I have nursed in odd locations, the weirdest one was a chair in the middle of the shoe department at Macy’s the day before Christmas. It’s crazy that when your infant is hungry nothing else seems to matter, you do your best to be modest and kind of invisible, but your baby is more important that anything else around you… especially when she is screaming!
My days now are really busy but there are 30 minutes a day that I have with Ariah that no one else gets, 4 nursing sessions, with the lights down and the door shut, just me and Ari. I stare at her and pet her head and wrap her little legs around the side of belly. It’s our time, peace and quiet, just me and her. I am crying as I write this because the thought of it coming to an end is heartbreaking.

Even though I aimed to nurse for a year, I truly expected to fall short of that. I thought my body would quit producing milk before I ever expected to wean her and I thought I would just deal with it when it happened. But, that’s not what’s happening. We are approaching her 1 year birthday and my body is still producing and my baby is still eating. I am making the decision to wean her from mommy’s milk to cow’s milk and it is so hard. I have heard other women talk about it and though I believed that it was a sad time when nursing came to an end, I didn’t understand how sad.

Even though we haven’t stopped yet I already miss our time together. I miss her needing me to fill her belly, I know that she won’t need it much longer. I used to think it was weird to nurse a child that could speak and lift up their mommy’s shirt and ask for milk. I don’t anymore. I think it’s wonderful that a child is raised with the knowledge of nursing and that they were fed from their mommy’s body.

I have been researching weaning and can’t believe I didn’t know all of the benefits that nursing provides for mom and baby. For both of us it reduces the chance of type 2 diabetes, ovarian cancer and breast cancer. For Ariah it reduces her chance of obesity, SIDS and allergies. There are more benefits but these are the ones that stick with me. God is so amazing to make this possible and I am so thankful that my body worked for so long.

Two days ago I gave Ariah cow’s milk for the first time. She drank a little bit and then refused it. Yesterday I gave it to her again and she drank a little bit more. Today I warmed it up like I would a bottle of breastmilk and she gulped down 2 ounces (that's all I put in there). I don’t think that we will be completely done nursing by her birthday but we will reduce our sessions by half. Daddy and I will give her bottles midday and I will still nurse in the mornings and evenings if my body complies. I am still in awe of how this affects me so much and how much it hurts my heart to think about Ariah being weaned. I feel like it is the right thing to do so that if and when we are pregnant again, weaning is not an issue. I also think it would be nice to have my body be mine for a bit before I start growing another human being inside of me. Those are the points of logic that I have but the emotional mom side is so much stronger than the logical side.

I love her so much and will miss this time with her. As much as I will miss nursing her I am looking forward to her being independent and all that we are going to learn together. I am so thankful that my husband is so understanding of the tears that I cry and all of my feelings and that he is supportive. He asks me questions and is trying to help me find another activity to do with Ariah that will keep us close. I know this is just one little chapter in our lives, my life with my daughter, and as excited as I am about the next chapter, it sure is hard to turn the page on this one.