I haven't been sleeping. For about a week now I've managed to get only two - three hours a night thanks to my brain refusing to shut up. So when I couldn't sleep I wrote...
___ . . . ___ . . . ___
It's 11:22pm and I have to be up in six hours. But I can't sleep. My mind will not be quiet, my muscles will not relax.
The anxiety burns inside my chest and I lean over to Map Guy and tell him "My heart hurts". He knows what I mean.
He snuggles me close and offers words of comfort, asks me what I'm anxious about.
I rattle off a few things, most of which revolve around going to Blogopolis. I'm not anxious about meeting people this time (well not much), I'm losing sleep over the 3000 little things I need to do before Thursday. But the big one, the thought that has created a two week tension headache, is whether Tricky will wean while I'm away.
It's so late by the time I finish talking, only a few minutes later, he's fast asleep. Bastard. I wish I could slip away in to dreamland that easily.
At the moment Tricky and I have our special milky cuddles twice a day. My bookend baby takes relatively little milk, but what he gets instead is attentive, (mostly) quiet bonding time. Just he and I, our bodies warm against each other, drinking in each other's scent.
Chubby star fish hands grab all over me (Where's Mama's nose, Tricky?) and clench my shirt as if he's holding on for dear life. He'll look up at me and smile, giggle, then bury himself back in, not once dropping the nipple.
We've had a pretty good run with the whole breastfeeding caper. We did have some issues early on that saw me noticeably tense with dread when it was time for the next hourly feed. I would grit my teeth and feed him with tears rolling down my face thanks to the stabbing white hot razor blades of a staph infection.
But within a few months it all settled down... and it was something I could do anywhere, any time. Feed him; nurture him; comfort him instantly. It became something I could do well, and over some dark days the thought that I was actually good at something for once, buoyed me.
So how will I feel if my three days away sees him wean, perhaps a bit sooner than he was ready? I'm not sure. I know we've had a great run (almost 14 months) and that anything now is just icing on the cake... but still... still there is the feeling that I'm forcing him.
When did your baby wean from the breast? How did you handle the hormone shift? Or didn't you notice it?
