Thinking about weaning, and thinking about not weaning

I always thought I would let Annika nurse until she was done. When Annika was an infant, I had no intentions of even night weaning.

But this past week I've been seriously considering weaning completely.

This topic has been no different for me than all of the other choices I have had to make when it comes to parenting. One minute/hour/day/week I want to go one way, then I think about it and I can't decide if that might be harmful for my child. So, I put off making a decision. Then I get frustrated with it all and go back and forth, back and forth.

There are no easy answers for these things.

I didn't read up much on nursing because I thought I knew it all. My mother was a La Leche League leader when I was a kid. Ever since I can remember I heard how great nursing was. I was nursed until I was 3.

I thought my decisions on nursing were set in stone. It was a relief to think that at least ONE thing I didn't have to make a decision about.

The idea of mama-led weaning seemed laughable to me. Until this week.

Annika still nurses as much as seven or eight times a day. She's been sick this week and it has been that much or more on the days when we are home most of the day. I did not think that Annika would still be nursing this much at this age. I had always heard that during the second year kids usually drop down to two or three times a day, usually surrounding sleep. I thought that was the natural progression.

Even in my peer group, where most of my mama friends still nurse their toddlers, it's not typical to see them nursing in public.

Some moms make a point to stop nursing in public in the course of the second year.

I never even thought I would do that. And I haven't so far.

For the most part Annika rarely asks to nurse when we are out and about, which is why most toddlers aren't seen nursing in public. They just don't think about it. If Annika does ask for it, it's because she sees another kid nursing and even then she only nurses for a minute or two. If we do nurse out of the house, it's usually in the car before leaving somewhere.

But lately I have gotten so frustrated with nursing that I started thinking about weaning.

I picked up a couple of books (How Weaning Happens and Mothering Your Nursing Toddler) from the South Austin API book library. It's a local group I'm a member of.

I only read the first page of How Weaning Happens and I started to cry. All of a sudden all my frustrations began to become reality. What got to me was a passage that said weaning was equivalent to a mother's rejection of her child.

It had taken some time, but I realized that what was frustrating me was not that Annika still wants to nurse. I think it's that I'm not doing something right or I'm missing something.

I don't know what it is, or if that's even the case.

But I wonder if Annika is getting all the nutrition that she needs. She must be missing something if she still wants my milk so much. She also refuses to eat enough solid foods. Or maybe I'm not giving her enough attention, or the right kind of attention. Being with a toddler all day is exhausting. It's not the same kind of exhausting as a baby.

Babies are at least easier to interpret. Babies need four things. Food, sleep, diaper change, or holding. Toddlers need those things, but they also need mental stimulation. They want you to sing with them or to them. They want you to dance with them. They want you to give them food. Then they throw it on the floor. They want you to play games and read books. They want to leave the house. But then when you are ready to go they don't want to leave. You spend all day cajoling, helping, stimulating, feeding, dressing and undressing.

And then on top of it all, parenting experts tell you that you have to set "loving limits." What the hell does that even mean??

So I wonder if I'm setting the "right" limits around nursing. I don't want to give Annika the wrong signals. But I also don't want her to think I'm rejecting her.

As I write this I'm still at a loss. A big part of me says that I should just continue down this path and let her determine when she wants to nurse. We've night weaned and even though she still asks to nurse at night, she has stopped fussing and mostly it seems to be mumbling in her sleep out of habit, and not actual wakings.

So that's the one limit I've set and I wonder if I should be setting any more limits. After all, they grow out it.

Right?

Right?

Working with babe on my back

“Woman verbally assaulted here yesterday for breastfeeding.”

That's what the sign read, written in black magic marker on white poster board. It was 10 a.m. I was 30 minutes late and sweating my booty off already having hiked along the trail for about a quarter of a mile with my 13 month old on my back in her carrier.

I had stopped to ask a woman walking with her daughter if she had seen a group of women nursing babies along the trail.

“No,” she exclaimed with a broad smile. “But I would have LOVED to see that!”

I was looking for this “nurse-in,” planning to write about it for an online publication I am applying to. The day before, a woman from one of my online parenting boards had been yelled at for nursing her baby in public without a cover. She came home and furiously sent out a message to the board asking women to meet her the next day to nurse their babies along the trail where she had been abused.

I had woken up late that morning. Annika usually wakes me up anywhere from 7 a.m. To 8 a.m. on any given day. But noooo, not this morning. The one time I wanted to be dressed and out of the house by 9 a.m. she decided to sleep in until 8:45 a.m.

As I approached the women sweating, I looked around for the woman who had been yelled at.

“Hey!” I smiled at everyone, hoping they would notice that I also had a baby with me and take me as one of them. No such luck.

“Who are you with?” a woman asked me, only noticing my reporter's pad and camera swinging from neck.

Nobody was nursing anymore. Luckily, Monica, the woman who had been verbally assaulted, cheerily greeted me.

“I need some nursing moms,” I told her.

She quickly complied, nursing her baby and asked some of the other moms start up again. Luckily there were a few moms there with kiddos who had healthy appetites.

As I snapped my photos, I told one mom, “This is the first time I've done an assignment with a baby on my back,” as I slowly bent over carefully trying not to swing Annika too much while avoiding hurting my knees.

“You'd never even know she was back there,” she smiled with the contented smile of a nursing mommy. I love that mysteriously contented smile.

I realized that I had made a rookie mistake when I began to write on my pad and my pen didn't work. I didn't have a second one with me.

When I used to be a reporter I always had at least two pens with me along with extras in my pockets and car.

I felt like such an amateur.

I was too embarrassed to tell any of them that I didn't have a working pen, so I didn't interview any of them. Luckily, the pen worked just enough for me to get their names and one quote. It looked like a third grader had written it, but at least I had the names.

As I headed back to my car, Annika still swaying along behind me, she started to squirm. It was almost as if she knew that I was done working and ready to just be her mommy again.

NIP still not normal

Breast is best.
So everyone says.
The American Medical Association promotes it.
Most pediatricians will tell new mothers that breastmilk is the best food for their growing babies.
Then why oh why are mommies expected to first express it into a bottle before feeding it to their babies?
And if, horror of all horrors, we decide to let the babes suckle the magic milk straight from our breasts why are we expected to cover up said breast?
Nursing in public is still somewhat tabboo here in the U.S.
When I was pregnant I remember an older co-worker telling me how she used to go sit in bathroom stalls to nurse her boys in the early 1980s.
Another female co-worker came in to work one morning and rushed to tell me about this really cool tent-like contraption she saw a woman using to nurse her babe in a restaurant the night before.
"It kept her covered and the baby was able to eat in private!" She regaled me while I wondered why on earth a baby needs privacy to eat.
When I first started nursing, I carefully kept my breasts covered while I held my often wriggling daughter in one arm, unlatched my bra and stuck my her head under the covers of my shirt and a blanket.
In May.
In Texas.
Earlier this week a woman on my online Attachment Parenting group wrote a scathing account of being verbally assaulted while out for a jog, needing to nurse her baby and realizing she had nothing to drape over herself, so she nursed anyway, exposing herself.
The attacker, a woman, said my friend was being rude, was disgusting and told her to go do that in the barn with the other animals.
And this is Austin. It's a pretty liberal town. I've been told that being topless is legal here, although I don't know it for a fact.
And another thing.
MEN don't have to cover up their tits when they are in public and they don't even need to be bare chested for any reason other than to keep cool! How fair is that?
Luckily for me, I've dropped that puritan attitude about my breasts.
Are they sexual parts of my body? Sure, sometimes.
But they are also a way for me to nourish my child physically and emotionally.
I'm not going to cover that up.
No way.
No how.
I'm here. I'm bare-breasted. Get used to it.