Little Bean is a great fan of breastfeeding. She hasn’t actually had breastmilk since she was almost-one and determined to move on in the world of food choices (a decision of hers which hurt me to accept).
Nevertheless, she has lately adopted the practice of pretending to be a baby (this, hilariously, includes running around shouting ‘I’m a baby! I’m a baby!’ in a most un-babylike fashion). Her concept of babyhood is fascinating to me: babies like to be rocked, they like lullabyes, milk from breasts or from bottles, and they like to be carried around. They also like to cry, crawl, climb up adult legs, lie on the floor and make bicycle motions. Not all that inaccurate, really.
Bean mimes breastfeeding quite often, particularly after we’ve been to an ABA meeting or visited a friend with a new baby. She’ll come up to me and say ‘baby wants some milk!’ and pretend, over my clothes, to latch on.
She’s seen photos of me feeding her as a baby. Sometimes, she asks me if she can have ‘real milk’. At one point I realised she thought she simply wasn’t allowed to breastfeed: she once asked for me to put my ‘real milk’ in a cup for her to drink. So I explained that I used to have ‘real milk’ but don’t have any anymore, because she stopped drinking it and I stopped making it. Bean has made sense of this in her own way, ‘I used to have milk from mummy’s boobs but I drank it all up!’
I wanted to have the experience of feeding a toddler but I have to be honest and say that I can’t really imagine her, at this size and level of maturity, feeding at my breast. It would be a different feeling had she been doing so each day and we were learning new ways of negotiating our breastfeeding relationship together, I’m sure, but when a friend asked recently if I would consider ‘giving her a go’ I immediately knew the answer was no.
It’s strange, to acknowledge how complete the separation of our bodies is now. When I began to blog, I conceived of us as a Venn diagram. Now the umbilical pull we feel is entirely emotional; she was once of my flesh but concrete connection is only a memory and I suspect her baby-play is an acknowledgment of this, a sign of understanding that fantasy regression is the only way back to that place of two-in-one.
Negotiating the boundaries of our selves, living here beside (not stuck to) each other, is challenging for us both, though there is a feeling of rightness to it now that there wasn’t back then. It didn’t happen this way for us, but I can still sense that now, as she nears three and barrels so quickly towards greater independence, may have felt like a good weaning age.
And I sense something more. For Bean, love is separating from need, coming into its own, taking form. I am blessed to bear witness to the emotional development of a delightful little person. Immeasurably blessed to have that fledgling concept of love-without-need-but-sometimes-just-because bestowed upon me. As it happens, I lately find myself needing less and less to have her physically in my prescence but loving her as much; differently; even more, than I did in those newborn days when I ached for physical connection and wept when I had to watch others feed her.
There is a synergy to this that might be luck.
I haven’t been keeping up, but so glad I did read this. It’s made me smile.
‘Love separating from need’ is wonderful. I like your Venn diagram thought; methinx it gradually becomes an infinity symbol, separate but never separate iykwim.
Tigger, who is ten and has good memories of breastfeeding, occasionally turns a comfy cuddle into a mouthing, self-consciously, almost poking fun at himself – VERY occasionally, I should say. He being male and on his third girlfriend (what they call ‘girlfriend’ anyway), it would make me uncomfortable except that he’s also very aware of the subtleties of emotions and relationships, and in fact gossips with amazing insights about group dynamics of his circle at school and so on. A born psychologist perhaps! He’s more likely to make our (neutered but female) dog give suck to his fluffy toy than to pretend about himself and me. Oddly, he never pretended to feed his toys when he was at the age when toddlers do so.
He did breastfeed for a long time, unlike Tall who chose to stop at 20 months. My favourite memory is when he was tall enough to stand on the seat next to me, which put his eye level slightly above mine, and feed from standing, one hand on my shoulder – which stuck his bottom in the air. Shame we never got a photo of that.
But no, once any interval has passed, with either of them I’d have felt odd about having another try for real. Though I know some friends don’t feel the same.
Your love letters to Bean are a delight.
What a beautiful post, Elizabeth. I don’t have children of my own yet but love reading your ‘mummy-posts’, perhaps in anticipation of what I may experience one day. Thanks for your warm insight. x
A lovely post – its interesting for me because Bigger has recently wanted to ‘be a baby’ – to be cuddled, held and sung to. I have wondered if it might be because of an increasing recognition of when I am there and when I am not there
At the same time she has become aware of ‘love’ and will hug for no reason – again an interesting development
For me its like being attached with a rubber band – sometimes it stretches and sometimes it brings us closer together
I feel terrible about the judgments I used to have on toddler / child nursing, which were brought out in their insensitivity and ignorance over the years in watching many other nursing pairs (something I was almost totally not exposed to growing up) – and after nursing my own kids until ages two and three.
I miss the days of nursing but because my kids aren’t in school and because we all sleep together and because of the life we lead we are still very physical… it’s not nursing but it’s not all that far off in so many ways. Last night my eight year old daughter and I were watching a movie and she was stroking my body and she told me, “This is the view I like,” while massaging my chest. Both kids love, love, love my chest and belly. The night before that my six year old son was holding me and he said, “Your hair smells so good… you are prettier than pretty.”
My family growing up, we were loving but not physically intimate. I got to remedy some of that while nursing my dying father in hospice care at home, but my mother and I, who are very good friends, don’t have anything like my children and I do. I have no idea if we’ll grow out of it or not but I don’t feel too worried about it.
I smile when you muse on weaning at age three. I just went looking for this which I wrote five years ago – my daughter weaned at age three on the nose.
Thanks for sharing. Like Lydia, I love your mummy posts.
This is lovely. Reading such a beautiful description of your experience is inspiring. The diversity of feeling out there in motherland is wonderful.
Really interesting and beautifully expressed. I have a 3 1/2 year old who weaned at 14 months and a 16 month old I am still nursing, so I am experiencing the various stages, sometimes simultaneously. The big girl started wanting to be a baby as soon as the baby was born, and still says it sometimes. She occasionally pretends to feed from me, and feed her toys. In terms of love as opposed to need, she has started saying she loves me spontaneously, which is just heart-melting.
I’ve never had a particularly strong feeling of physical attachment to my girls but I adore the intimacy, most of the time.
This is the kind of stuff that I have to sanitize when I talk to kids, especially in the parochial schools. So good to hear how it should sound.
I just found your blog and i’m loving it.
My bub turns one on thursday… and it seems my milk supply is petering out. I’m sad, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
He’s in daycare three days now, and has formula there. And has started sleepovers with his dad, and gets formula there. I’ve never had much luck with expressing, so there’s been no other option.
I’ve started offering him a bottle after his night feed, if he’s still alert and not sleepy. He drinks it and I cry. But I can see it’s my sadness, not his.
Thanks for stopping by.
Yes, it can be such a difficult thing to let go. If you’re interested in delaying weaning there may be some things you can try (kellymom.com is a good place to look, if you haven’t already).
In any case, I hope the sadness lessens for you soon. I found it really helped to find other ways to be physically close to replace breastfeeding – I started to give her massages and bathe with her more often, for example. And I also found that it helped to acknowledge that feeling grief at the loss of a breastfeeding relationship is perfectly normal and it’s okay to cry. A sympathetic friend who understands your tears can really help.
I remember my sadness just after my 2-yo Critter was born, when I saw that our physical intimacy was something that he was going to gradually let go of — first, birth; then one day, weaning; and so on. But this: “love is separating from need, coming into its own, taking form” — yes, it is a blessing. Thank you.
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