And She's Off

The boob that is. It's official, Tatum is no longer a breastfed kid. Most of you reading this are probably checking out the ticker at the top and thinking Tatum is 19 months, why is she still on your breast anyways? Maybe not. Andrew was thinking it, as I have been since she turned one and I started the weaning process. But honestly, looking back, I didn't so much wean as simply stop. So here we are, seven months later, and we, Tatum and me, are officially separated by bodily fluids, except for my wet kisses.

For those that read this blog regularly, I posted some time ago about going off the pump and onto the formula. That was when Tatum was about 10 months old and I reduced our feedings together to before bed and in the morning. The before bed feeding was dropped one random night when Tatum was 14 months old. Andrew was out of town, and I decided to get Tatum in her nighties in the living room instead of the bedroom to break up the routine. When I set her down in her crib for the night, she gave me a questioning look, then took her blankie and went to sleep. Just like that, the feeding was gone.

But, ah, the morning feeding, that's the feeding that gave me an extra 15 minutes in the bed during the 6am hour. She is in the room with us, so I wake when she does. Tatum is my alarm clock. The morning feeding is my snooze. Nevertheless, the morning feeding was dropped this past Tuesday when Tatum slept in and I needed to leave the house to get to work. So I left her sleeping and went to work. Andrew said she woke up, said "Momma?" and went on her merry way to eat her breakfast yogurt. The next morning I got her up, we went straight for the yogurt, and she was happy. So that's it, we're done; and I have yogurt to thank for making it so easy.

Another chapter ends in our life as mother and child. It's bittersweet for me: sweet that she growing more independent and bitter that she's growing more independent.  Being a lover of ritual I thought I would somehow observe the last feeding in some sort of way.  But the experience ended without knowing it would.  And such is life. Whooosh, there it goes.