A week ago Judah nursed for the last time, and the ensuing wave of hormones that has engulfed me as my body rapidly shifts gears has been a bit overwhelming. But amongst the many emotions, one has stood out above all the others: Gratitude.
I am so incredibly thankful to have been able to nurse my son for fourteen months, especially considering that I was pregnant for the last four months. It has been a greater blessing than I anticipated to have to opportunity to feed my child so naturally. And as thankful as I am for this experience, not every step has been easy.
Judah was born knowing how to nurse. He was an expert right away. Unavoidable pain of learning to nurse aside, I am exceptionally fortunate to have a child who never struggled with his latch, never needed to be coaxed to eat. We had the opposite problem: He was ravenous. Like, CRAZY ravenous, all the time.
For the first few days of his life he nursed every two or three hours like a good little newborn, and just when I was feeling like we were in a good routine- BAM. Every twenty minutes. He couldn't even last a half an hour without needing to eat again. I didn't have time to take a real shower or eat a real meal in-between nursings.
One night I was feeling especially tired and sore, so I filled to the tub with hot water and the bath soak my mama had given me, and sunk in to relax for as long as the water would stay warm.
I brought my phone with me, risking water damage, so that I could revel in the pointlessness of Facebook for a while. Someone had shared a post from their blog and I sat there reading, nodding emphatically, so thankful that I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Just as I was typing out a long comment thanking them for their clear devotion to the Lord regardless of what people say, the crying ramped up. Judah had been crying most of the time I'd been in the bath, but all of the sudden his voice changed, and Arthur knocked gently to say that he seemed hungry.
So we took Judah's clothes off and I held him half-in, half-out of the bathwater and nursed him there. It was comical, really, even then. Even in the moment- when my every day and every night was merely a series of feedings followed by attempts to sleep and that sleep inevitably being interrupted by another feeding- it was a little hilarious.
It was less hilarious when Judah was less than two weeks old and I ran out of milk. My supply couldn't keep up with his demand, and it was absolutely terrifying. And painful. I lay in bed trying to sleep, when Judah woke up crying and hungry...which made ME cry.
It was 2am, I was in despair, and I told Arthur he might need to go to the store to buy formula. He suggested I flip through the book my mom had given me about breastfeeding to see if it had anything helpful, just in case, before he headed out. Sure enough, the book told me to stick with nursing even though it was painful, and that my supply would catch up. And after a miserable night of miserable "feedings," everything evened out, praise God.
And then there were the adventures in nursing in the outside world.
When Judah was six days old my mom took me to buy some clothes that would accommodate nursing. For most of that excursion my sister rocked Judah, who alternated between crying and filling his diaper, but finally I couldn't postpone nursing him anymore. So I sat on the floor of the changing room, somehow able to prop Judah up on my legs so that I could nurse him.
We sat, he eating, me fighting back tears and wondering if those whole thing would ever get easier. In that moment, the thought of wearing the right clothes and finding the right places just so I could nurse seemed overwhelming and impossible.
By the time we were brave enough to take Judah to church he was about three weeks old and my body had adjusted to nursing. I had a scarf that doubled as a nursing cover, so I was set, right?
About five minutes into the sermon Judah got hungry, so off to the nursing room we went. It was dark, and quiet, and the sermon was coming quietly through the overhead speaker. I sat in one of the glider chairs, propped Judah up on a boppy, and donned my nursing cover. Judah, however, was uncomfortable on the boppy and furious that I was covering him up, so he would not nurse.
So I moved to the floor, doing my little prop-you-on-my-knee trick, and abandoned the nursing cover. Another woman came in with her baby, and quietly sat down to nurse.
I swear to you, neither mother nor child made a sound the entire time.
Meanwhile, my son was finally eating, which entailed me sweating profusely (thanks, hormones) while Judah issued a loud series of noises including slurping, gulping, and passing gas. Cute, I know.
It got easier, though. As my mama predicted, by three weeks nursing was manageable and by three months it was easy. It became second nature- not a fiasco of carefully-orchestrated steps to be completed, but a simple and natural way to feed my child.
Sure, perching on the edge of a toilet seat in a public restroom because I was uncomfortable feeding him in crowded restaurant wasn't my favorite, but more often I found myself in the living room of family or friends, easily and comfortable nursing my baby.
And because God's design for breastfeeding is incredible to behold, Judah got over sicknesses easily- the same cold that Arthur would have for a week, Judah would get over in 48 hours thanks to how my immune system worked to protect him. He grew steadily. I was confident in the nutrients I gave him through nursing, and comfortable with this new role I had as a nursing mama.
Now, things have changed. His nursing has slowed gradually ever since we began introducing solids around 5 months, and it dropped to just a few times a day over the summer. I worried about how long it would take and how hard it would be to wean him completely, and my mom told me not to overthink it. Just don't offer, she said, and nurse him whenever he asks for it. With time, he'll ask less.
In July I worried briefly that he wouldn't be weaned "in time."
"In time" was by his first birthday, because I was longing for another baby and wanted to stop nursing before we tried to get pregnant again. But I decided that if I needed to wait a few extra months to get pregnant so that Judah could wean naturally, I would do that. I tried to focus on being excited about getting myself healthy for another pregnancy rather than weaning just to get pregnant...and then I found out that I was pregnant already.
As I've said already, this was the best of surprises.
I never intended to be pregnant and nursing. In fact, I'd said a number of times that there was no way I could do both- I'd been so horribly sick during my pregnancy with Judah that I was worried I'd never be able to keep down enough food to provide nutrients for a growing child, a growing baby, and myself.
But by the time we learned that I was five weeks pregnant, I was still feeling fine. So I kept nursing. Then my chiropractor told me that nursing hormones actually help balance your nausea, and I praised God that my grand plan had failed- because oh man, the relief from constant nausea was incredibly sweet.
A month ago, when Judah was 13 months old and this baby was 17 weeks in utero, I asked my midwife if I needed to stop nursing for the sake of the baby's development. She said to nurse until Judah and I were done, that my body would take care of the baby.
Which brings us to a week ago. Judah had dropped to one nursing per day, and even that hardly counted sometimes. He usually nursed for just a few minutes in the middle of the night, and it seemed to be more for comfort than for food.
Saturday, at 4:30am, he woke up and I nursed him. But within minutes he had rolled over in bed beside me, put his pacifier in his mouth, and fell asleep cuddling between Arthur and I.
We slept like that for an hour before I took him back to his bed, thinking to myself to savor it, because soon there would be no more middle-of-the-night nursings to use as an excuse for cuddling. And there weren't.
I waited for a few days, hesitant to decidedly say that Judah had officially weaned himself. But he had.
He had no interest in nursing, not even for comfort, not even when he fell and hurt himself or woke up from a nightmare. He cuddled me and buried his face in my shoulder when he cried, but he never asked to nurse. So I didn't offer, I just waited.
And really, weaning went exactly how I hoped it would. It was ideal. Judah weaned himself, in his own time, when he was ready. It was gradual, and easy, and slow. There was no rough transition stage. I am so deeply thankful for these things. I so hope I'm able to wean this way with this next little baby, but even if I'm not, God is generous to have given us an easy weaning this time.
Then about three or four days after Judah's very last nursing I felt like I lost my mind. All of the sudden I found myself sobbing, suddenly, for no reason, when moments before I had been happy. Little things like walking to the kitchen for a drink of water left me in a heap on the floor, overcome with inexplicable sorrow and uncontrollable tears. My kind husband held me each time I switched abruptly between laughing with him to wailing into his shoulder.
It felt like a deep depression that came and went without warning- part of the time I was myself, and then, all at once, I was miserable and had no idea why.
After a day or two of this, it clicked. Hormones. Of course it was hormones. Just like the sudden, dramatic shift my body went through four days after Judah was born- when my body shifted gears from growing and delivering a baby to producing milk- I was going through a similar shift again, except this time it was the opposite. This time my body was abandoning the need to produce milk and throwing all of it's energy into growing the baby within. (Interestingly enough, this was also the time when I finally began to feel consistent, frequent movements from the little one inside me.) I had the Baby Blues...or the Weaning Blues, I suppose.
It's been a little over a week now, and it's getting easier. Just like my body took some time to adjust to nursing, it's taking some time to adjust to NOT nursing. But God is gracious; He is merciful. Amidst the tumultuous journey of motherhood, and all of the hormones and emotions that come with it, He is a constant source of grace, strength, peace,and joy. Sometimes I forget to depend on Him for those things. But when I turn to Him, He is quick to provide.
That is the real lesson for me in all of this: Depend on your God. Because while I have no control over hormones that may at times rage within, I do have control over Who I run to in each moment.
**Note: In the picture I used for this post, Judah was eight days old. Sure, nursing was no fun at that point, but LOOK HOW CUTE HE WAS. Totally worth it.
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