it is so quiet, except in my head

The weaning seems to be continuing. I’m okay with it. Kind of.

When my sister was in town recently, she said, “I wish you could be confident in the decisions you make as a mom.” She meant it in the nicest way. She thinks I make good decisions. She’d rather I not torture myself by waffling, wondering what-if. What if I had done the other thing that was probably better and so-and-so’s kid is… what? Better than Jonah? Not really. With apologies to everyone in the world, I think my kid is the greatest kid ever. I like how he eats, how he sleeps. Really? Just for today, he’s a good sleeper again. Bedtimes are getting harder and easier. Harder because he seems to have had a delayed response to daylight savings or a developmental jump that has him not tired until 7 or later instead of the good old 6:30 we had going before. Easier because he’s made a leap mentally and is more conversational, so we can talk about bedtime, saying goodnight. (Sleep gods, please do not curse me for writing about this…)

Tonight, we read books until 7:00, during which portion of the bedtime routine I also refilled his bottle, on request, twice, and at the end of the last book, he said “Pee Pee” — which I had to oblige and sitting on the potty meant playing with the toys residing in that area, currently: Spiderman finger puppet, Sesame Street’s Count finger puppet, a pink chicken bath toy, a polka-dotted purple hippo bath toy, all four sitting in an empty egg carton (Empty! Eggbox!). “Ride!” he says, which means make the Spiderman ride the chicken while doing the motorboat sound. To his credit, after about 5 minutes or so of this, he did pee. Yay team!

Then we had toothbrushing. I now try to give him a good brushing myself with the toothbrush or the rubber fingertip that came with the kiddo toothpaste before letting him have at it. He ADORES the rubber fingertip and the strawberry-banana flavored paste. Getting him to STOP brushing his teeth takes some doing, with many promises of “Tomorrow, you can have the finger again tomorrow.” “Finger! Finger!”  he whines as I carry him back to the nursery.

While I sing him his three lullabyes, he calls out the toys he’d like to play with instead of going to bed. So I pause each time and say goodnight to that item for him. “Horse!” pause song, “Goodnight Horse,” “Zebra!” “Goodnight Zebra.” etc. Then he starts naming people not in the room. “Daddy” “PopPop.” And I say goodnight to them.

At the end of the third song, his eyelids are drooping. I put him down, still clutching his bottle. New thing: he likes to sleep with his bottle. Is this because he’s weaning? Is this bad? Is this his Transitional Object???

“Blanket,” he says, and I pull the blanket over his back (he’s crouched on his belly, knees tucked under him, bottle clutched to his chest, face turned to the side on his doggy lovey). I stroke his head. “Mommy?” he says it like a question, though there’s never any follow up. “Goodnight Mommy, Goodnight Jonah,” I say. “I love you, I’ll see you in the morning.”

I leave the room. He says “Mommy?” one more time after I close the door, and then it’s quiet.

This is one night, the seemingly current bedtime scenario.

Recently a friend told me how she never did any CIO-type sleep training, always laid down with her kid, co-slept or slept with him in the crib next to the bed. Now that he’s 18 months old, she EXPLAINED to him that he needed to sleep on his own, put him in his crib, stroked his back while he cried a little, reassured him that she understood how he felt, that she would stay with him until he fell asleep, and then he fell asleep. EASY PEASY. She felt so good, and rightfully so. She had found a solution that worked for her and her child. I was happy for her, and I wanted to kill her. Because, as longtime readers of this blog and my sister know, I wanted to be that kind of mom, but I wasn’t, and frankly Jonah wasn’t that kind of kid.

So now we’re two days from his 16 month mark, and the breastfeeding is really starting to fade. It has felt MOSTLY collaborative, though I did consciously night wean him (more than once) and then consciously chose to stop nursing him to sleep (more than once) — both as tactics to improve  his sleep and mine. I know many moms who wean all but the morning and evening feedings and maybe it’s because I’m not a 40-hours at an office gal but I found the last feeding of the night to be tiresome, dragging on forever, rather than a loving cuddly sort of thing.

He’s allowed to nurse on demand during the day. Lately, that demand has only occurred in the morning when he wakes up, and possibly once or twice after that, depending on what we’re doing. Most days, he doesn’t ask to nurse from his midday nap forward. Tonight he did make a 5 p.m. request (“Nurse!” he said, then grabbed my shirt and said “Open!”) which I obliged and he latched on for about 15 seconds, then popped off and crawled down to play his drum.

I’ve been feeling tired and weepy today, which I think I can ascribe to the hormone changes from the weaning.

I wonder (though less so than with the sleep stuff) if I should have done this differently. Should I have nursed longer? Now that he’s taking about 10-12 ounces of milk before bed, I think not. 16 months doesn’t feel like a round number. Maybe he’ll keep the morning feeding till 18 months. That feels like a milestone-type age. I’m pretty sure that if this goes on till his 2nd birthday I’ll be putting the “Boop-ahs” (as they are now called) back into my own underwire bras for good at that time.