Ok, so seriously, I've been the worst at updating the past week. I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear that I'm sick again. Luckily this time N is not (fingers crossed that sticks) and A has actually been HOME!! So the past few days I've missed my little monkey because I've just been feeding him and handing him off to A to avoid getting him sick. I can barely look at him while he's nursing because I feel like I'm breathing germs on him. A has been AWESOME. I can't say enough about how wonderful he's been. He got up at night everytime and only got me up if N was hungry. He took N to daycare and picked him up every day, he played with him and did all of the bedtime routine, again, only making me help out to feed (which is because I'm nursing). I know I complain about him sometimes but I couldn't have married a better man! Now that I'm feeling much better of course he has to travel a bit but that's ok. I'm just going to keep trying my hardest not to get N sick and pray that this was the last cold of the season!
This whole week though has made me totally jealous of people who feed their children formula. Since I'm nursing, I could have A give him a bottle of milk that I had pumped instead of waking me up. But I'd most likely have to wake up anyway to pump so that my supply kept up. If N was taking formula, I could have just had A give him a bottle without having to worry about pumping, or my supply or getting up or anything. It got me thinking about weaning N.
I always said that my goal was six months and that after six months I would start to wean him. After a while I said I would start giving him a bottle of formula at 5 months so I could have him weaned by like 7 months. Well, we're at 5.5 months and no formula yet. We are doing solids, he loves some Sweet Potatoes. He gets solids around lunch time and dinner time every day. He still is consuming just as much milk though. So I'm still pumping 4 times/day to get 3 bottles/day for N. Sometimes I do get extra. I am still able to get a bag or two extra each week. So I have no supply issues although I HATE...HATE...pumping with a passion. I'm tired of washing pump parts and sanitizing them and bagging milk and trying to do all of this around the classes I teach online. Thank god I don't teach through video conference (only audio) because my clients would be seeing way more of me than they need to. I feel like that's not a good enough reason to wean though.
But I have all these little selfish reasons that I want to quit:
1) Drinking. I would like to be able to have more than one glass of wine without worrying about pumping/nursing
2) I hate pumping
3) I want A to be able to feed N without have to use up my milk supply/or pumping so I can sleep and he can take some of the load off me
4) I want my boobs back
5) Drinking...wait did I already say that?? Oops. (I'm not an alchy I swear)
Then I start thinking about all the pros of nursing:
1) The price is right!
2) My body makes enough milk (which is huge, I know I should be grateful)
3) N is good at it ( again huge and I'm extremely grateful)
4) Always the right temp
5) No harder to prep for daycare than formula (other than the pumping).
Then comes what I think is the weird part of my thought process. I feel like by stopping BFing, I'm taking something away from N. He likes to nurse, it calms him down, he snuggles up to me. He likes bmilk. What if he doesn't like formula! I feel like he would be sad. I know it seems completely irrational to me but I really think that. I don't want him to be sad or miss nursing or think I'm punishing him for something...ok that last one I doubt he would think, but that's where my mind goes. This is actually the HARDEST thing about weaning for me to get my mind around. I don't want to make N sad. All the other stuff, the price, the warming the bottle, the prep I could care less about. I know that N is also good at taking a bottle and just because my body is good at making milk doesn't mean I have to do it forever. But the making N sad thing KILLS me...
Now after all of this I have come to the conclusion that if I'm having so many doubts, I'm probably not ready to wean him yet. I'm slowly preparing myself for it. I know I will miss it because I do enjoy nursing him and the closeness (and convenience) but no matter what I will have to stop nursing eventually. I'm not into extended bfing and don't know if I can really make it a year, although you never know. A year is my ULTIMATE limit though. I'm guessing I'll get about 9 months in and then be done. I have to say though I never thought I would be this conflicted about it. I knew that I would get attached to it, I knew that there was a closeness, a bond that you create with your child while nursing that would be hard to break. I just didn't think it would be like this...I just thought I'd be sad. I'm not sad, but I can't say that I won't be when it comes time. I know though that I'm not ready yet, to break that connection.
