Urban Drool

I seem to have real trouble coming up with interesting/unique/eye-catching/at all relevant ways of staring an entry. This seems to be especially true for entries that contain actual-emotional-type-thoughts-and-emotions-and-stuff.

Important stuff.

That being said:

So! I am done nursing.

Done.

As in, all gone. No more.

I was all set to stop when the baby turned one year old. For no other reason than 1 seemed like a nice, round number and she was only nursing 2-3 times a day at that point anyway and I would kind of like my body back and etc., etc.

And then 1 year started to approach and she showed no interest in stopping and then 1 year passed us by and she still showed no signs of stopping. So, for a week or so I just let her keep on doing her thing. Admittedly, there was a part of me that was pretty content and smugly-smug about my sweet milk that my baby still craved and the general hippy-crunchy-granola-ness of it all. I was picturing a delighted 2 year old still needing me for the occasional snuggle and milk top-off. But this shiny little bulb of daydreams started to wane the more I took notice of two interesting facts:

Fact 1: My milk had dwindled down to almost nothing

Fact 2: This only made the baby nurse on me harder, faster and rougher than she ever had before.

-subfact a) a newborn’s gummy-gums ain’t nothing compared to the force that a frustrated 21 pound toddler and her 9 teeth can exert upon one’s teeny-tiny nipple.

Now, I can take the occasional nip and accidental nibble. But what I physically am finding it hard to endure is the constant chewing. I simply call it “The Chew.” At times, Lucy doesn’t seem to particularly mind that there is almost no milk there. She is cutting some serious back molars and simply wants to use me as a teething ring.

The Chew.

{Shudder}

The Chew has resulted in very badly bitten nipples, several tissues to wipe up the blood (yes, the blood) and one particular bite on my right side that is so bad that, 4 days later I still cannot put my bra on without wincing in serious discomfort.

So I thought about it and I read some stuff and I talked to the Boy and I talked to my mother in law and I talked to the baby’s pediatrician and then I thought about it some more.

And driving to work this morning I had to turn slightly to peer into my rear mirror and the steering wheel brushed against the bad spot on the right breast.

And the pain was enough to make me decide at that moment that Lucy and I were no longer going to be nursing.

This post has been written with a bit of snark and a bit of jest, but it is actually a very difficult decision to make. I am pretty emotional about it (hey! There’s something new!) and I have been told by some of my girlfriends who breastfed their children that the hormonal crash is going to be kind of bad.
But I still think it needs to happen. It might be hard on her, it might be hard on me, but I just think it needs to happen.

So, after 12 months, 1 week, 3 days and about 12 hours of feeding my child the best food I could give her I am stopping.

I shall cry (more than once, I am sure) and I shall be very angry with myself (more than once, I am sure). But then I shall also go out and buy some fantastic new bras for myself and take all the Advil and drink all the hard-core booze I feel like drinking.

Cheers.