Just Kidding

I'm still trying to decide whether to share this post or not. I'm not a failure. I'm just learning. This is my first time around, and sometimes I just have to try something and see if it works.

I made such a big deal about weaning Adara. I shared it more than once on Facebook, and then wrote a long blog post about it. The one right before this one.

Then five days later, just when I thought I was done with both nursing and pumping altogether, I caved.

I was a little concerned that Adara would not do well with cow's milk. Both Alex and I have varying degrees of lactose intolerance. I called Adara's pediatrician to ask about an alternative to cow's milk. Her nurse said that I could try goat's milk and see if that helped, but that it was important that Adara have some kind of mammal milk until age two. I've tried goat's milk before from the grocery store, and it's just as painful to my digestive system as regular cow's milk. Recently Adara woke up from her nap crying and pointing to her tummy, so my concern grew. Still, I thought organic milk might be better, so I decided to stick with organic cow's milk for now.

The chaos started last night. Dinner, playing with Adara, bath time.

Then came the screaming. She would not, would not put on her pajamas. She could not, could not drink her bottle and go to sleep. (We'd read a lot of Dr. Seuss that day.) I decided to let her stay up, since we'd been home all day. She just kept crying and screaming and getting more and more upset. I finally just put her in her crib and let her cry herself to sleep over the next ten minutes. I was feeling very discouraged, especially since the day before had gone so well.

This morning was a breeze, and I got my hopes up again. She saw the bowl I didn't put up from last night, pointed to it and said "ice, ice" for ice cream (we had frozen yogurt last night). So her breakfast was a small bowl of frozen yogurt, pickles (also leftover from last night) and three strawberries she saw in the fridge. That's a pretty good breakfast for her. She drank a minimal amount of milk from her bottle.

 I brought some water in another bottle and a bag of pretzels for our grocery shopping trip. Sometimes grocery shopping is stressful with her, but today was great. I allowed her to help push the cart, and she loved smiling to all the elderly who shop at the same time. We stopped by Chick-fil-a to bring lunch home. Alex is home sick today, and requested I bring something home. We drove home and Adara helped me unload the groceries.

Then the waterworks started again. She wanted my lemonade, but she didn't really want it. Everything made her upset. Giving her fries with "dip" made her upset (which she loves), going outside made her upset (which she loves), taking a bath worked for a few minutes, but as soon as she got out she got really upset again. She pushed me away, and pushed Alex away (he had stepped in to help, even though he was feeling really terrible), and then screamed and screamed when her towel wouldn't stay wrapped around her. I began to question my resolve to be done nursing her. Alex looked at me and said, "you can nurse her again."

So I did.

She immediately stopped crying and calmed down. After about a minute, she looked up at me with the biggest smile I've seen in a week. If I thought it was appropriate to put boob photos online, I would have snapped a photo of that precious smile just to show you how much it was worth it to nurse my precious child.

We read books for about half an hour, then I nursed her before nap time with absolutely no drama. As much as I thought I was relieved to be done nursing, I'm a million times more relieved to be able to comfort my baby and provide nourishment that won't hurt her tummy like cow's milk.

So maybe we'll be done by the time she's two. We'll see.