Weaning Jane

So, the thing is... I'm wearing green cabbage leaves in my bra.

Warning: this week's column contains the word BREAST in it repeatedly. I'm talking about weaning Smiley Jane and there's no real way to do that without mentioning that part of the human body. If you, like my friend Carol Ann, have e-mail software that alerts you of anything dicey within an e-mail message by flashing a red hot chile pepper, that's why. Now that I'm a mom, I am not the least bit embarrassed by any mention of ANYTHING related to bodily functions or human anatomy --and indeed, I once opened the door to a UPS delivery with a baby firmly attached to my breast without ever thinking about it (the driver could NOT figure out where to look) -- but I'm trying to be sensitive to you non-moms out there. Plus, I kind of want to see if Carol Ann's software gives her MORE peppers if I get on a roll about anatomy in general --kind of like the pepper ratings on a Chinese food menu. So, read on at your own discretion.

I haven't told you that I was weaning Smiley Jane before now because I didn't really need to hear about how you nursed your child until she was driving and how she scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT and is about to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know all the reasons I should keep on nursing Jane --BELIEVE ME, I agonized over this decision. I still feel pretty guilt stricken even though everyone I know has been amazingly and unconditionally supportive -- my best girlfriends, my mom, our pediatrician, casual passers by-- all congratulating me on nursing Jane for six months as an accomplishment of significance and all reassuring me that I'm not the worst mom in the world for stopping. (As Sandra, God bless her, said "Motherhood is not found exclusively in the mammary glands.") My husband, other than a totally reflexive reach for the camera when I appeared before him bedecked in cabbage leaves (supposed to ease the engorgement of weaning), did everything he possibly could think of to make me feel better, both physically and emotionally.

I wish I could say I enjoyed nursing more, but I just didn't. I feel like a total LOSER even admitting that --every other woman seems to find breastfeeding among the top ten womanly events of her lifetime, right after natural childbirth and I didn't do THAT either. I never felt like it would be okay to choose NOT to nurse, especially since I was blessed by the Mammary Fairy and could have qualified as the Official Wet Nurse of CHINA, but I respect others who made that decision and I feel for those women who would have loved to breastfeed but couldn't for whatever reasons.

Nursing was a struggle for me, especially with Jane. The Smiley One turned out to have the strongest sucking reflex known to woman (I thought she’d been born with teeth!) and the need to nurse constantly. In the beginning, I cracked and bled --gosh, it was painful. I would offer her my breast and then cry silently while she nursed. I had to commit to nursing her a week at a time until we found a nice groove. I'd start every week saying "Well, I'll do this for one more week and then re-evaluate." I really felt strongly about breastfeeding her but it wasn't exactly a walk in the park and no one ever tells you that breastfeeding is sometimes HARD. Kind of a double whammy, really, because we all think it should be easy and then when it's NOT, we feel like such failures. Well, *I* did, anyway.

I didn't love breastfeeding but I love that little Jane and I wanted to give her as much of a good start as her sister had. But the decision to stop is the right decision for ME, if not Jane. And that's a really tough thing to say and a tough balance to strike. I've never been very good about recognizing that I have to take care of myself in order to take care of my children.

I stopped for lots of reasons. I typically don't lose my pregnancy weight until I stop nursing and I am dealing with some self esteem issues related to being overweight and those issues have an impact on my behavior and the healthy modeling I want to do for my girls. But I am also ready to not walk through a grocery store for 45 minutes before I notice that my shirt is still unbuttoned from nursing Jane in the car. I want to drink a glass of wine without feeling like a child abuser. I'm ready to burn my nursing bras and I really, really want to sleep on my stomach. Assuming, of course, sleep is ever in my future again. I wrote the first part of this column at 4:30 AM while holding bags of frozen vegetables to my aching breasts. (I know we have ice packs somewhere but I can’t find them.) Apparently, WEANING Jane isn't going to be a walk in the park either.

It's very weird to know you are doing something for the very last time in your life. (I always want to add some kind of caveat about "God willing and the creek don’t rise" when I say that Jane is our last child because I have learned that the best way to tempt Fate is to plan definitively. But God willing and the creek don't rise, Jane is our last child and therefore I have nursed my last child for the last time.) It's hard, as a total granola mom, to now give my child something that is entirely synthetic, as formula is. It's hard to go to comfort Smiley Jane, who looks at me with such love and admiration and joy, and not give her every last drop of myself without ever thinking about what's best for me or the rest of the family.

But that nice Jane, the Tiniest Girlfriend, takes her bottle and reaches up to touch my face, smiles a milky smile and then, with total assurance that I will always be here to meet all of her needs, curls into my body and goes to sleep. I think we're going to be just fine.

Despite that cabbage smell.

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Barbara Cooper is the mother of Ana (3) and Jane (six months). She lives in Austin, Texas and doesn't typically have this much fun with produce.