I think I nursed my baby for the final time last night, as tonight I ended up skipping our nightly nursing and instead just sang to him and gave him a cup of milk. While I didn’t plan it in advance, I’ve known this day was likely coming sooner rather than later, as my baby is 16 months now and in recent days has been barely nursing before I tuck him into bed.
For the last month or two, I’ve stopped bringing my phone with me when I rock and nurse him, so that instead of being distracted by scrolling (ever more disheartening) news stories, I can just be mindful of him. I’m thankful for this, for these extra moments of singing to him and noticing the warm weight of him in my arms, the shape of his cheeks, the sound of his breathing and swallowing, the smell of his freshly shampoo-ed hair, what it feels like squeeze his warm, pajammied squishiness close.
But these last couple of days he has hardly nursed at all when I rock him, although he still has wanted to snuggle and sing bedtime lullabies with me. And tonight it just felt right to forego nursing altogether, even though a part of me didn’t want to believe the time to say goodbye had truly come. I suppose this is yet another lesson in the complexity of holding multiple experiences, of how even something that is good and right can also feel sad and hard.
I’ve been putting off ending nursing with him in a way that I didn’t with my first. I’m not sure exactly why. I think a part of it may be because this time I don’t know if I will ever nurse again. Will I have another baby, or will my second also be my last? Right now I don’t have an answer; I really don’t know. And yet from this space of not knowing I still need to live, to love.
I think another part of my reticence also has to do with not wanting to say goodbye to yet another precious thing, after a year of what has felt like loss after loss and sorrow upon sorrow—globally, nationally, and personally (even though I realize I’ve lost far less than many). All of these layers of grief make one more loss—even a loss that is a healthy and even joyful part of my baby growing into toddlerhood—feel sad.
Losing nursing reminds me of other losses, of things that are gone and can never be again. And it goes against my desire to freeze time and hold everything close and familiar, as it is, forever. I realize, intellectually, that a part of life is that it is always changing, growing, shifting—with loss and joy intermingled. But my heart still feels sad for now.
I suppose sadness and loss are fitting reflections and feelings to be experiencing during this first week of lent, a time when we are called to remember and honor and enter into suffering (Jesus’, others’, our own). I want to be brave enough to make space for grief, even while holding on to the hope of life—life offered in the full by Jesus, but also in the little everyday experiences such as how my boys grow and play and laugh and cry, fiercely feeling and present even amidst the sorrows of the world.