annesley, the BIG girl

Sep 8, 2010

Miss Annesley Aliyah, the joy of my life and pretty much constant companion for the past 2 3/4 years has decided to become a BIG girl! What is a BIG girl you ask? It is a baby that makes the BIG decision to not nurse anymore and to fully enter the world of childhood.

To celebrate her BIG decision she got to pick out a Big Girl bike. It is bright green and she is loving it. She is still working on mastering pedaling and steering, but she is getting the hang of it.

I am super-duper proud of Miss Annes. This is a big step in her life and after the first two days she is handling it really well. At first, she was asking to nurse every 30 seconds or so, then I would ask her if she had changed her mind and didn’t want to be a big girl. She would say “No, me BIG girl” and calm down. Thirty seconds later she would ask again and the same conversation would repeat. Today she has only asked to nurse once and I didn’t even make it to the conversation part before she started giggling and saying “Me Big Girl, Me Don’t Nurse!”

Some people wonder why I nurse my babies and especially why I nurse them past the first year. Here is a a list of 101 reasons why breastfeeding is such a large part of my mothering.

While all those things on the list do wonders for my research-lovin’ brain, what it really boils down to is this – it feels right, it feels like this is exactly what babies need, what God created mothers to do, and the best process I know of to learn how to be a mother.

I am so grateful for my breastfeeding experiences. I know I would be a vastly different mother if I had chosen to bottlefeed. I easily could have become a bottle-propping, leave-baby-in-bed while I do more “important” things, but instead breastfeeding forced me to slow down, to gaze into my baby’s eyes, to feel the prolactin and oxytocin rushing through me, and to learn that motherhood was the most important thing I could be doing.

I have now nursed for 143 months of my mothering life. That is almost 12 years of providing nourishment for my children. Twelve years of being touched much more than even I am comfortable with. Twelve years of wearing nursing bras (and let me tell you, Bravado Nursing Tanks are BY FAR my favorite nursing bra!). Twelve years of sleeping with babies. Twelve years of having super-amazing antibiotic milk to treat cuts, infections, and rug burns. Twelve years of seeing my children’s cute little faces light up with joy at the end of a nursing session. Twelve years of wearing shirts that don’t tuck in.

Twelve years…unbelievable.