Bye Bye Boobie

I guess Ronnie is officially weaned. I didn’t really notice it happening, which is probably a good thing. I didn’t need to make some big pronouncement or anything. At some point last week, not even sure which day, she had her last nigh-nigh boobie.

It’s not like she was even actively nursing. But for the last month or six weeks she’d have her bedtime bottle and then still fall asleep on the boob. It was just easier that way. And if she woke up in the middle of the night I was still bringing her into bed with me. I started to give her a bottle in the middle of the night and put her back into her crib. I mean, her father had always been doing that if he was the one the get up with her but I was the slacker hold out.

During the day Mr. b had started laying Miss Ronica down in her crib for naps before she was even fully asleep. This was radical news to me. We never were able to quite crib train her the way we did with Kirk. We couldn’t let her just “cry it out” with him in the room with her! It wouldn’t be fair to disturb his sleeping. Hence the nursing her to sleep and putting her away already passed out. But if she was able to fall asleep on her own for naptime then that meant I needed to jump on her new skill set and let her fall asleep on her own for bedtime.

It didn’t work every time but for the past couple of weeks I’ve been able to put the Bundle to bed with her still awake. She might fuss a little bit but she’d rustle about and then be asleep by the time her brother and I tiptoed in a half hour or hour later for his bedtime. But the nights it didn’t work, it really didn’t work and I would give up and stick a boob in her mouth. I noticed the last few times that nursing her felt weird. Like, physically it didn’t feel the same. Probably because there really isn’t anything in there for her to actually eat anymore! There was a great line in Kim by Rudyard Kipling. The old high caste widow was convinced that mothers shouldn’t be allowed to raise children, only grandmothers, because mothers are too close to the pain of childbirth and the pleasure of nursing. That really resonated with me. The pleasure of nursing. It really was a pleasure. I’m so glad I had the chance to experience that fully. But it was time to end it.

So now I have to really start watching what I eat. It would be bad to unconsciously keep ingesting nursing calories when I clearly no longer need them.