Auden is almost ten months… and still breastfeeding.
If you’ve been around for our story, you know the gratitude I feel that this is our story right now.
The gratitude I have that this journey for us has been so easy… is immense.
And yet, sometimes… sometimes, against my own will, I find nursing, ten months in… taxing.
I prayed for this though. I hoped to nurse him a year, at least. So how is it that this also feels a bit like sacrifice?
It seems in the middle of these days at home, any routine this common can begin to feel like it’s my whole life... for the rest of my life.
So I’m writing this this right now as a reminder to myself to slow down and not rush through this moment in my mothering.
When Eliot, my firstborn, was a baby, I remember the weird feelings of guilt I had around the amount of sitting, rocking, and nursing, becoming a mom required of me. Sitting down peacefully is not something that comes naturally to me. (I’m working on it and have written about this often.)
Anytime Eliot fell asleep, I put him down. I was so thankful to have a baby so easy, I could transfer him to a crib and get things done.
The breastfeeding though—hours a day of it— felt like interruption or a task to get through, instead of like an important task and meaningful moment all on its own to handle with care. Looking back, I have some sadness about how I felt then and how often I put him down to get on to the next important thing, like he wasn’t all it.
In no way was it a lack of love, I believed, I think like most mothers do, that no one had ever experienced connection and love with a person like I had with my sweet baby boy. No way a love like this had been in the world all this time and no one had ever told me. It must be new, and all ours.
Looking back, even only a couple of years removed, I see clearly the design God has for us mothers. Pauses, built right into our days. Opportunities to stop, connect, sit, be still, and enjoy the littleness of my person.
I wish I had let my brain relax more often with my body in these moments of calm and closeness.
Being truly present in the pause is a gift. A gift to yourself. A gift to your child.
One of my best friends unknowingly spent the last minutes she had with her son, nursing him at her breast. She didn’t spend that morning breastfeeding time scrolling or distracted, but she was connected, paused. Gazing on her little boys perfect features: his tiny chin, his full cheeks, his perfect and piercing eyes.
Would that have been true of me? Without knowing I’d never hold my living son again, would I have been connected and present? Without knowing I would never nurse my baby again, would I have spent my time holding him being filled with adoration and gratitude? Or would I, thinking I had a lifetime left of giving my body up for this child, have been elsewhere? Not connected mind and body.
I shudder at the thought, honestly. Because I know how often I left myself slip away from the present moment, assuming I have many of these normal moments left.
I want to honor the pauses built into our lives.
I want to honor Valor’s legacy by choosing to live like this moment is important, even if it’s routine.
The moments that call us to sit together: whether it’s breastfeeding my son, or having lunch with my little boys, or that lull in the afternoon, where everyone’s a bit fussy and a bit sleepy, and we just needs books together on the couch. I want to present for it, without working out future problems in my head, or being distracted by the continuous labors calling to me to keep up the household.
These typical moments, the ones that feel repetitive and perhaps a bit lazy, I want to lean all the way in.
If you need me, I’m here, all here, at home with my family.