Letting Go
A Weaning Story
Lu Hanessian
Englewood NJ USA
From: NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 21 No. 1, January-February 2004, pp. 4
My son was barely out of
my womb when people asked me how long I planned to breastfeed. A year
and a half later, people ask when I plan to enroll him in school, whether
he throws tantrums, if he's a picky eater, if he's waking up dry yet.
Then they find out he still breastfeeds.
"I can't imagine nursing such a big baby," laughs my neighbor.
"Agh! How do you do it with all those teeth?" shudders my friend Jennifer.
People are curious, I suppose.
And probably a little concerned about a nursing child who can also feed
himself with a fork. "You still have milk?" a girlfriend asks
incredulously.
Occasionally, my father-in-law
teases me that Nicholas will still be breastfeeding when he's 35. "You're
coddling him," he jests. And I kindly remind him that he was nursed
until he was four.
"Why?" people ask,
half-afraid of the answer. Why nurse him when he can walk? I guess the
answer is so simple that it's kind of complicated.
My son loves to nurse. He
gets giddy. He takes my hand and pulls me to his favorite Red Flower
Chair in the corner of our living room. "Ana nuss, Mah-mee,"
he declares. Translation? I want to nurse. Yes, at a mere 18 months,
the boy knows what he wants. Or rather, he knows what he needs. He plays
like a Whirling Dervish, then comes to my lap and asks to breastfeed
for a minute, like an Indy 500 race car coming in for a pit stop.
He wakes up from a midday
nap, and my husband, Dave, brings him downstairs where I'm writing.
He looks at me with his nap hair and pillow-creased cheeks and gasps,
"Mah-mee!" And he runs to me from across the room in his superhero
way, arms suspended, fists high, eyebrows raised, mouth open, his eyes
glistening with anticipation. We spin in my swivel chair, reveling in
the moment, both of us wearing silly, sloppy grins of deep, deep satisfaction.
And then, he sits up suddenly, like a Pavlovian bell has just rung,
and says, "Nuss!" For him, nursing is a tonic, a stabilizer,
an elixir, a magic potion. Society tends to find it weird.
Some people think attachment
to the breast means attachment to the mother, which means too much dependency
on the mother. And too much dependency on mama? Well...we all know what
that means.
I suppose some people get
nervous because they think that a child who doesn't "learn to soothe
himself" will never learn how. I think about that logic applied
to anything else a child learns. For example, if you feed a baby, he'll
never learn to feed himself. Or, if you dress him, he'll never learn
to dress himself.
I'm warned that if I don't
wean him early, he'll never wean himself. In other cultures around the
world, however, it's not unusual for children to breastfeed as toddlers.
And they do, eventually, stop breastfeeding.
Our Western society, however,
frowns at the thought of a walking, talking child at the breast, because
it's generally perceived as inappropriate. Sexually inappropriate. As
if physical arousal was the goal of toddler nursing-or the effect! Maybe
people are uncomfortable with the emotional intimacy of nursing a toddler.
It's easier to sexualize the breast than to confront and resolve their
own intimacy issues. People who find a breastfeeding mother's motives
suspect just don't understand that no toddler can be forced to breastfeed
against his will. If he doesn't want to nurse, nobody can make him take
a breast any more than someone can force him to eat his lima beans.
In my mind, there is absolutely
no confusion whatsoever about a toddler's motivation to nurse. At 20
months now, my son's motivation is clear, because he tells me. I can
determine by the tone and inflection of his voice, and in what particular
context, the actual reason he wants to nurse. He wants to soothe himself.
He wants to connect. He wants to meditate. He wants comfort. He wants
to gather his wits. He wants to restore himself.
He comes to me and asks,
"Mahmee, pleez nuss?" And he whimpers in triplets under his
breath like he's bravely trying to stifle a meltdown. And then he adds,
"A lidda bit..." He's becoming aware of time and timing. He
is beginning to understand the unspoken and spoken dynamics of relationship,
and the language of his needs-and mine. "I have to go to the bathroom
first, sweetie," I explain. "One, two, fwee, fo…"
he counts, rocking back and forth on his little heels.
I am deeply convinced that
the only reason he is even half-heartedly able to exhibit this small
vestige of patience at 20 months is because I breastfed him whenever
his little heart desired until he was old enough to understand "not
right now." In other words, I can occasionally and lovingly say
"no" to him now as a toddler because I consistently said "yes"
to him as a baby.
This was my first blinking
"a-ha!" moment that shined a floodlight for me on the very
origins of trust. He trusts me, not because I am his mother, but because
I am the mother that responds to him.
We breastfeed in silence.
We breastfeed in dialogue. We breastfeed asleep. We breastfeed in a
chair at the end of the day until all the light is gone from the room.
I hold him, knowing, wistfully, that he will never remember this. But
somehow, I feel in my intuitive heart that this will have helped shape
his perceptions of himself and me, and give him some kind of internal
compass that leads him along a path that is always lit even if it's
dark.
In spite of my poetic musings
about nursing and the call of the human spirit, I still get flak. Lots
of flak. When he was a year-and-a-half old, many people thought my son
was just too darn old to nurse because he was apparently not a baby
anymore.
But he cried when I wiped
his nose. (Still does.) He didn't put his fingers in the right glove
holes. (Still can't.) He got upset when his hands were sticky. (Right.)
He fell apart when his play-date left. (Yup.) Time passes.
Now, at two years old, people
really think he's too old to breastfeed because he's a self-sufficient
toddler. But he wears a bib when he eats. He wants to play outside without
clothes. He wants his scrapes kissed better. He is afraid of velcro.
People at the mall, in the
park, on the airplane, at my pediatrician's office, and sometimes in
my own home, are upset with me. A friend visiting from out of town counted
how many times my boy nursed in a day. "Six," she says. "Like
a newborn baby," she adds. As if I've been giving him Coca-Cola
every hour, on the hour.
He cries upon my return
from an appointment one day, and a friend shakes her head, and mumbles
that she's "worried" about his breastfeeding. It seems everything
can be blamed squarely on the breast. Any unseemly toddler behavior.
International crises. Traffic jams. Inclement weather. If my son is
the slightest bit unruly, it's got to be the breast. Clingy? The breast.
Anti-social? You got it. Doesn't want to go outside today? Yep, it's
because the breast has lulled him into a state of agoraphobia. Wants
to play in the park until dark? It's the breast's fault for not setting
better limits on his recreation.
Left breast turned off its
plumbing? "There are women who nurse on one side," the doc
reassures me. "But at this point, it's time for you to wean him,"
he advises. "There are no medical benefits to nursing at this stage.
There are actually no benefits at all, other than maybe psychological.
But it's very controversial."
My son, who is strapped
in his stroller in the room with me while the doctor states his case,
is now crying so hard I can see his epiglottis. The doctor then proceeds
to tell me that I've put myself in a "very difficult position"
by nursing my child "this long."
"I'm not here for your
support of my nursing," I say calmly. "I'm here for a medical
checkup."
"Don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying I don't support nursing. I think nursing is great. I'm
your adversary!" he assures, surely meaning to say "advocate."
I don't bother to correct
him. Sometimes, I feel like a marathoner hopping on one good leg to
the finish line.
It's bedtime. My son and
I are in the rocker. He's nursing while doing his version of Cirque
du Soleil. My last nerve is frayed. I have little scratches all over
my stomach, almost as if I've wrestled a cat. He likes to press his
thumb into my navel when he's nursing like it's a milk dispenser. My
tolerance is depleted. I feel forsaken for feeling depleted. Resentful
for feeling forsaken.
His eyes are wide open.
Even in the dark, I can still make out two blinking black pools. I "shhh"
him softly. I tell him to close his eyes now. He puts his paw over his
eye as if to let me know that even if he won't close his eye, he can
at least cover it.
My breast begins to feel
sore, and I tell him I can't nurse him anymore right now. He manages
to stop long enough to blurt quietly out of the side of his mouth, "No..."
He believes he owns my breast.
Sometimes, I wonder if it's
really mine. For a moment, I feel a flash of ambivalence. I see how
nursing my baby has helped him flourish. I see how comfortable he is
in his own skin because he has gotten the kind of comfort he wants.
I see how helpful it is to both of us to be able to breastfeed him when
he's not feeling well, when we're in the emergency room with croup at
11 pm, and he's feeling hot, scared, and confused.
I see how he finds his peace.
Orders his world. I see how blissful it is to sit with him at dawn and
nurse him into another day. I see how breastfeeding him for comfort
has made him more comfortable in general. More patient. More respectful
of my needs. More able to calm himself. More centered. Happy.
I see how it has made me
more patient, more centered, able to calm myself. I see the look of
deep knowingness in his eye, as if we've been walking the planet together
for a couple of hundred years. I see how breastfeeding has become part
of our rhythm, our rhyme, our understanding of each other. How it has
given our relationship a whole other layer of connectedness. And how
that connectedness has influenced my parenting choices, how I perceive
him, and how he responds to me.
I can also see how he won't
go down to sleep at night with anybody else but me. At least, not at
this point. Not now. Not yet.
Sigh. I hear the chorus of
friends, strangers, and pediatricians who warned me about becoming a
"human pacifier." I can hear the wave of "I-told-you-so"
sweeping across the landscape like a hot wind. Is that them-or me?
Two seasons have passed.
The trees are barren in anticipation of our first snowfall of the season.
My two-and-a-half year old is watching an old Ed Sullivan show on TV,
the Beatles' first appearance. My son is sitting cross-legged on the
couch mouthing the words. "I wanna hold your hand, I wanna hold
your ha-a-and."
We haven't nursed in a long
time. Three whole weeks. An eternity. I think he's weaned himself. He
has been going to sleep without breastfeeding for months now. My breast
is no longer needed for soothing. For sleep. For comfort. For peace.
Gradually, he asks less.
His need diminishes in phases. The "gotta-make sure-they're-still-there"
phase. The "20 seconds phase." The phase where he asked me
if my breasts are "feeling okay." If they're "tired."
The first time we go a full
day without. A full week without, The first time I rock him in my arms
without nursing. The first time I comfort him without nursing. The first
time he sees a friend's baby breastfeeding, watches in recognition,
and goes on with his activities.
I used to think of breastfeeding
as the essential connection between us. I couldn't imagine, and sometimes
worried about, how we would relate to each other after he was no longer
breastfeeding. It was part of our language. Our understanding of each
other.
Now, in retrospect, I realize
that nursing is only one aspect of motherhood. One way of connecting.
One way of comforting. On the other side of the nursing journey now,
motherhood continues, of course. And, in some ways, for me, it is just
beginning again.
In letting my son decide
when to stop nursing-when to let go-I have learned about letting go,
too. About letting go of one thread while holding on to others. Letting
go, letting go, until more threads are loosened, unraveled, untethered,
like a dancing kite that has set itself free.
Last updated Wednesday, October 11, 2006 by njb.
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:29:43 UTC 2007.
