All Gone

I weaned my baby this week. Actually, she’s not a baby anymore. She talks and runs and even jumps, getting both feet off the ground at once. She chats to me all morning about Ben and John going bye-bye and the school bus she wants ride on. She carries her doll around, hugging it and saying “Love.” She turns her palms up and shrugs as she says, "I dunno." She started calling my milk “appa joosh” (apple juice). I guess she figured flattery might win her a few more months. It did.

Weaning was easier with my first two babies. I got pregnant when Ben was 10 months old, and by the time he turned 1, my milk had changed so that he no longer wanted it. He humored me for a few more months, nursing at bedtime. When he finally turned me down flat, I sobbed for an entire evening, telling Brian that I now had “nothing.” Hormones, much?

John, at 21 months, had nursed only at naptime for several months. One afternoon, I sat on the bed, lifted my shirt, pulled him close, and he said, “No.”

I said, “OK,” plopped him in his crib, and that was that.

Ava, though, wasn’t going to let go so easily, and with no impending pregnancy to help things along, I knew I’d have to help her transition. For the last six months or so, she nursed just a naptime and bedtime. She’d let my mom put her down for a nap without asking for me to come nurse her, and if I was out for the night, Brian could put her to bed without a problem. I thought maybe I could just casually stop. A few times, I made my way over to the rocker instead of the edge of my bed, the one and only place I nursed her. I’d start rocking and singing, and Ava would point frantically to the bed -- “There! There!” – until I gave in.

One time I took it a step further, and said, “It’s all gone.” She screamed and cried, and it wasn’t a well-thought-out attempt in the first place. I just gave in, but I told her, “It’s almost empty, honey.”

“No,” she said, staring into my face, her eyes wide. “Appa joosh.”

In the back of my mind, I figured I’d stop by her second birthday. But lately she started nursing for less and less time. She’d drink for three or four minutes then say, “All gone,” even on the good side. Nursing no longer made naptime easier, in fact, my mom could put Ava down faster than I could, because she never fell asleep nursing. It just made the whole process take longer. Plus, I didn't want to drag out the pain any longer by continuing to say "Almost gone." There was no denying it. My girl was 22 months old, and it was time.

Thursday at naptime I told her it was “all gone,” for real, and she cried and cried. She fell asleep and woke a short time later, crying again. She started saying, “guk” for “milk,” getting serious now, not wanting to cause any confusion by asking for “appa joosh.”

“All gone, honey,” I told her. And now, after less than a week, she’s fine. I’ve averted clogged ducts or mastitis, as far as I can tell, after an emergency crash-course in manual expressing Saturday morning. I haven’t even cried once about it, which surprises me a little considering I’ll never nurse another baby. Besides a severe case of lopsided breast syndrome, I'm OK.

I'm just replaying it in my head, how her legs got so long that I had to move the pillows on the bed to make a spot for them. The way she’d point at my breast and say, “There it is!” then kiss the air a few times. The way her eyes would kind of roll and then close as she latched on. What it felt like to hold her in my arm, my other hand resting against the small of her back, holding her in position. Her face nuzzled against me, her arm slung up over her head, fingers twirling her hair. The way she'd come off the breast just to say "More," bringing her fingers together to make the sign, emphasizing her point. Then, that last time, the way she popped off and said, “All gone,” not knowing that it really was.

It really was time.