The Joys Of Weaning

My baby is 12 months old. He’s eating more food (and more food and more food…he’s like a starving teenage runaway) and nursing less. Thus, our breastfeeding relationship will soon come to an end. It’s a happy/sad time. I like breastfeeding, but I also like a lot of things that I give up or regulate to do it. Like being alone for more than 4 hours at a time, and not having to plan my vices around the baby’s eating schedule. So, I shall celebrate his weaning day by indulging in some of the things I’ve missed. Huzzah! I will:

1. Sleep past 6 a.m. Even if the baby lets me sleep in, my boobs don’t. When the clock strikes 6 am, the girls let me know. Sleeping over. Must relieve pressure immediately. Must feed baby, pump, or suffer in bed as I pretend I’ll fall back to sleep. Sometimes I do all three. I can’t wait to do none.

2. Jump my husband’s bones. Remember how in 10 (Mildly Shallow) Reasons to Breastfeed I bragged about having unprotected sex for baby’s first 6 months? (Side note: tons of people called out my claim that exclusive breastfeeding can be a reliable form of birth control. Google “lactational amenorrhea” and you’ll see I’m not full of it). I could’ve, but most days I didn’t want to. Even the thrilling and naughty prospect of unprotected sex wasn’t generally enough to get me going. Still now, in baby’s second 6 months, I’m seldom raring to go. Thanks largely to breastfeeding, I’m too tired from being at his beck and call night and day, my estrogen levels are pathetically low thus so is my libido, and after having the boy attached to my boobs all day, I’m not often in the mood for his father to take his place there. Or anywhere. In other words, breastfeeding is my sex life’s assassin. But after my daughter was weaned, it was like Spring Break in my bedroom for a month. In other words, weaning is the assassin’s assassin.

3. Put my pump in the dustiest, darkest corner of the attic. I have a love-hate relationship with my pump. Mostly hate. So I’ll banish it to the attic and forget about it until I either have a third child and begrudgingly dig it back out, or admit to myself that I’m not having a third child and gleefully give it away.

4. Have coffee and margaritas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Because I finally won’t have to plan excessive caffeine and cocktail consumption around when the baby needs to nurse.

5. Buy all new bras. Milk boobs are glorious but post-milk boobs are not. I haven’t been lingerie shopping in ages, so I’ll perk up my ta-tas and myself by buying all new, super-flattering, inappropriately sexy MILF bras.

6. Run five hours of uninterrupted errands. I’ve nursed and pumped in plenty of parking lots because I was delusional and thought I could squeeze a week’s worth of errands in between feedings. It’s pretty awkward when security knocks on your car window to make sure you’re not casing the jewelry store you’ve been parked in front of for 30 minutes. It’s even more awkward when your breasts are out or there is a tiny, disembodied hand sticking out from beneath your shirt.

7. Take medicine for no good reason. Unless I’m at Death’s door and my doctor specifically approves, I do not take medicine when breastfeeding. But oh how I miss it when I have a headache or feel like crap on a stick. I will thus indulge in the analgesic bliss of modern medicine for even the most minor pain and tolerable physical discomforts.

8. Complain about missing breastfeeding. Awwww/groan. Yes, breastfeeding makes me tired and sexually apathetic, and it can be a total pain in the tush. But it’s also regularly scheduled bonding time with one of my favorite people on the planet. What’s not to miss about that?