Done Nursing

It has been a couple of weeks since I have nursed Joshua, so I am pretty sure I am done. I thought I was done once, then a day later I felt really full and chased him down to relieve me. But now I have gone long enough to say I am done. Joshua was pretty good about stopping, he didn't even seem to notice as I cut them out until we stopped his morning one (also the last one I cut out). Then he got fussy and clingy. I figured out that he just wanted to cuddle some (he is not a cuddly baby at all), and so we have started going out to the couch and sitting and reading his books. But now it doesn't matter if it is Brian or me doing the cuddling. Joshua is growing up.

I am glad to be done and these are the things I won't miss:

• Worrying about finding a place to nurse if we are out, or getting back in time before he gets upset.
• His nursing problems. He can't breath through his nose (see the next post for more on this), so we have had to adapt to help him.
• When he first came home from the hospital I stopped pumping before my body got used to his nursing style, and he stopped gaining weight and my milk supply dropped very low. So I ended up having to nurse and pump and supplement with bottles for a couple of months until Joshua and I really got it figured out.
• Nursing was tiring for him, so if I accidently let him get too tired he would just scream instead of nursing, so I learned to be careful about letting him go too long.
• When he would get extremely congested I think it was uncomfortable for him to nurse so he would avoid it even when he was starving. I remember one time he tried to play happily for an hour to avoid nursing even though I could tell he was starving. I did learn that giving him a couple of sucks from a bottle would make him relax enough to nurse when he went on strike like this.
• There was only a couple of months he could nurse under a blanket. At the beginning I had to keep an eye on him to make sure he was actually sucking, and at the end whenever he would come off to breath (every few seconds), he would yank the blanket off and look around. Heck I couldn't even use his body to cover me because he was moving around so much.
• The last thing I won't miss, is the new found freedom I have of being able to leave for a while if I need/want to.

But I did enjoy nursing for the most part. And there are somethings I will miss too.

• It was really the only time Joshua would cuddle with me. When I tried to cuddle with him other times he would push me away, but it was okay because he was glad to see me when it was time to nurse.
• For a few months even after he was done nursing he would lay next to me and cuddle for a while longer. That was especially great because it was the time when he was really fussy and was under quarantine. But for those 30ish minutes he was calm and I could relax.
• Nursing also allowed me some me time. When he was really little I could play on the computer and even send a few one handed emails. When he got older he started wanting to play with the computer too, so we went into his room and I started reading books. It was wonderful and very relaxing.
• I will miss not having to worry about if he is getting a balanced diet. If he didn't get alot of vegetables one day, or protein the next I didn't have to worry about it because I was making a balanced meal for him every few hours and the rest was just supplementary.
• On a similar note I will miss the feeling I got from being able to make food for him that helped Joshua grow from just under 3 pounds to over 20 pounds when I was done.
• Finally I will miss the morning nursing because he was always so happy to see me when I went in to get him in the morning. It was the one nursing he was never fussy at, and he would nurse for a while and then come off and talk to me for a little while. It was a great bonding time.

But now Joshua is growing up and I am able to bond with him in other ways. It has been really fun to watch him really start to discover the world around him.