I’ve been get­ting nos­tal­gic lately.  In the past few days, I’ve been think­ing about nurs­ing, nurs­ing K, nurs­ing K while preg­nant, and what it was like when I thought he was wean­ing at 19 and 20 months.  Right now, A is 18 months, and I can’t imag­ine what it would be like if he wasn’t nurs­ing.  He’s still such a baby!  He barely talks.  He doesn’t eat much as far as solid foods go (in my opin­ion, which is obvi­ously pretty sub­jec­tive).  He doesn’t drink cow’s milk.  He’s a BABY!

Right now, K is 3 years and 2 months.  He nurses for com­fort only, and he often nurses between 1 and 3 times a day.  Yes­ter­day and the day before, he nursed only once all day long.  Today, it was three times.  Although he may not be any­where near wean­ing at all, I still think about it.  I think that I am far more pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­ity now than I was a year and a half ago.  I feel like I know him bet­ter.  I feel like he knows him­self bet­ter.  I feel like we can work through hurts, tired­ness, sad­ness, and sick­ness now in a way we couldn’t before.  When he wasn’t nurs­ing dur­ing the end of my preg­nancy, I would often hold him and feel uncer­tain and con­fused.  How would I help him if he was tired?  What would I do if he was sick and couldn’t keep any­thing else down?  I was at a loss.

Dur­ing that time, I read an arti­cle called Wean­ing Ella at Brain, Child Mag­a­zine’s web­site.  When I read it at that time, I was a mess.  I was in tears, and I only felt the bit­ter­ness of an early wean­ing child.  Now, as I reread that arti­cle, I do feel a lit­tle bit­ter­ness as my baby grows and needs me in dif­fer­ent ways.  How­ever, I also feel a sweet­ness to it.  We have done this together!  Nurs­ing is a part­ner­ship, and we are we made it this far by work­ing together.  Most of the time when I think about wean­ing or hear about it, some­one is talk­ing about a baby wean­ing.  I think right now is a time when I am wean­ing, too.