Turning a corner | Weaning my toddler
Nix has always hated the car. Vehemently. Road trips are a knife edge experience of gritted teeth as we wait for him to lose the plot and turn on his air raid sirens. Child is L O U D. He has been this way since birth, and looking back I wonder if his body position in the capsule and carseat was painful for his wee tummy for his first 9 months pre-Hirschsprungs diagnosis. Until he was about 6 months old he would be in tears or close to it after only 5 minutes into our journey. School pick-ups were a nightmare if we arrived early, let’s just say Ethan never had trouble finding the car thanks to his baby brother! I also suffered a lot of postpartum pain for months after Nixon’s birth, the simple task of getting the capsule in and out of the truck required heroic effort that I simply didn’t have most of the time.
So, we stayed at home a lot in the early days.
Yesterday we popped up the road to go to the bank, the post office and the vege stand – no stroller or carrier and I didn’t hold Nix while in the shops. Because this little free spirit is generally a non-compliant tornado, I’m quite loathe to let him loose in public, however it’s time for him to learn and for me to get over my mental block regarding taking Nix out and about. Yesterday he we did great. Awesome even! Quite a line in the post office sent fear shooting through my heart, but we survived with only a small tantrum when Nix couldn’t press the eftpos buttons for me – that I can handle.
I was driving home and we were chatting away about diggers and diesel in the truck, Our House, ‘Nouie’ = Louie and a myriad of Nixon’s other favorite topics, when I realised it was all I could do not to pull over and just sit and stare at him, to try and drink him up with my eyes.
I remember being wonder-struck with Ethan at around the same age. This Autumn season of baby-ness before they turn 2 is one of my favorite ages. Every day when he wakes, Nix seems to be joining more and more words together, finding new and more inventive ways to make mess and lavishing hugs and kisses on all of us with much gusto.
What’s really got me feeling all gooey is that I know it’s time for me to stop breastfeeding. Nix will be 20 months in a couple of days and is 15 kilograms of raging baby bull. Feeding this particular baby bull is no easy task. He yanks and pulls and whips his head around, he kicks my face and thrashes like a shark in a net. It ain’t pretty. But it’s quite lovely still. I’m ready to move on but I know without a shadow of a doubt that Nixon will not give up the boob on his own. After months of thought and ummming and ahhhing over the issue, today was the day we started weaning – no good reason why, I just had an idea I thought I’d try.
Nix asked for milk {or guhhhguhhh as he calls it, don’t ask!} at around morning tea time which was weird as he never usually feeds then anyway. I jumped up and said “guhhhhguhh all done, but you can have some Big Boy Milk”. I proceeded to make a huge fuss about the pouring of the Big Boy Milk, complete with a fancy bendy straw, and voila! The boy drank cows milk. Just like that.
Naptime at 1pm was not quite as easy, there were tears but we survived. Just. At bedtime Dave and I introduced a new routine of quiet time with both of us, a book and some more Big Boy Milk. I followed this with his normal nighttime routine, sans breastfeeding of course, and it worked. He asked again for good ol’ guhhhguhhh, but I stuck with the party line of “all done” and that was that. Off to sleep without a peep.
And I just feel conflicted, sad and weird. But I’m also damn ready to ditch these crappy bras I’ve been wearing for 2 years and put on a dress!
So wish Nixon and I luck. He’ll be fine. Me, well, time will tell x
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