So, I fed Tyler a bottle today. The second bottle I've ever fed him. The first one I ever fed him was just a few short days ago. And yes, he's just a few days away from being 11 months old. I am starting the process of weaning and reducing my milk supply so I took advantage of a particularly busy time with work to drop the first feeding of his day. So when he needs to eat around 1pm, a bottle it is.
I have lots of thoughts, but to sum them all up in one short sentence...this is awesome and sad at the same time. Awesome because I don't have to pump in the middle of the day anymore when I'm away from T and going 6 full hours without checking into that lame black bag is totally glorious. It's actually kind of interesting that this one small change, because I'm still pumping at 10am, 4pm and 7pm when I'm away from him, already feels like I'm getting some freedom back.
Being a new mom (especially for the first time) brings so many immediate changes- the biggest is a "restructuring" of time. AKA a LOT of time now belongs to the baby, not the mom. So when I say I get a little freedom back, I mean I get about 20 minutes that used to be devoted to Tyler (in a round-about way through the pump) that can now be devoted to whatever it is I need. Usually, more work or lunch at work. Either way, it feels good.
(Above portion originally written on June 4th)
Fast forward to July 29
Tyler is now a full-on whole-milk-drinking 1 year old. From the time I originally started writing this post to now, we have weaned from most nursing sessions and incorporated whole milk (in bottles, because he doesn't love sippy cups) into his routine 3 times a day. He still nurses when he wakes up and when he goes to bed which works for both of us. I am amazed at how much different I feel- and how much less nursing affects me on an hourly basis. Now I literally just feed him twice and don't think about it at any other given time during the day. It's freeing (just like I said it was when I first started the process).
A friend told me that while I might miss nursing and the quality time spent with Tyler, I would find other replacements for that time with "older baby" type things. Totally right on. Now, usually around the same times every day, Tyler crawls into the kitchen sits down on the floor and looks at us with those eyes that say "can I have some milk, please?" because he's really not a talker yet. When he wants a bottle of milk, this is what he does...without fail, every time, like clock work. In the last few days, he has even added hitting the kitchen door to his repertoire of "signs."
Another thing I've caught him doing- pretty much every bottle I give him, at some point while drinking it, he stops, takes the bottle out of his mouth, twists and wiggles his body all around until he ends up sitting on my lap in somewhat of the opposite direction he was just facing, then puts the bottle back in and continues on. I can only imagine this is him "switching sides" mid-nursing as he's been so used to doing for the past however many days it's been.
In all the lead-up to weaning, I had a lot of ideas in my head of how it would go. So far, it's been far easier than I imagined it would be. However, we did just recently determine that it'd be fine for me to keep nursing him at wake-up and bed-time for however much longer it goes so I guess we aren't 100% done with the process yet...
Either way, I've spent some time thinking back to those first 6 weeks of nursing- which I don't know if I gave any airtime (blog time) to in the thick of it- and I'm so glad (and proud) we made it to 1 year! I have said, and will always say, that delivering Tyler was the easy part compared to breastfeeding Tyler during those first 6/7 weeks...and delivering Tyler wasn't easy, my friends.
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