About as much fun as a kick to the head (which I actually got last night)

In two short weeks I’ll be headed to Chicago for Blogher. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it, but this trip also comes with some mixed emotions. You see, I’m not bringing my pump with me, and being gone for 3 ½ days, there’s a good chance that this is when I’ll be done nursing Gabbie for good. She’ll be 14 months, clearly old enough to be done, but she also is more interested in nursing than ever before. This makes me feel incredibly guilty about stopping, because she’s clearly not ready. I am, though. I’m ready to have my whole body back, and since Aaron wants to start trying for a second one in the not too distant future, I’m looking forward to having my body be mine for a short while before its sole purpose is making another person again.

We’re currently down to nursing about three times per day, once before bed, once in the middle of the night, and once right when she wakes up in the morning. While none of these are going to be easy to convince her to give up, we decided, for sleep’s sake, to try to wean her from the middle of the night feeding first. We started on Sunday night, and tried to convince her she didn’t need to nurse. After about 30 minutes of screaming, I gave in, but only nursed her on one side. The next night was a repeat of the first, and the third night was pretty close too – I only nursed her for about a minute on one side and then popped her off and gave her the pacifier. There was a little fighting, but not too bad (see? It’s mostly a comfort thing, I’m sure of it).

Last night, however, was another story altogether. I was determined. I put a cup of water in her room before bedtime, and when she woke up at 4:00 this morning looking for something to drink, I gave her the water. She downed quite a bit, then pushed it away and started nuzzling up to me looking to nurse. When I said no there was screaming. Oh, the screaming. Like I was physically hurting her, or taking away some prized, beloved possession. It was so hard not to give in, but I managed. I told her that it’s night-night time, and we don’t nurse at night-night time any more, but we would nurse at wake-up time when it was light outside. Surprisingly this settled her down for a few minutes, and managed to do the same a couple of other times she really started up. We struggled for about an hour, until she finally fell back asleep, out of pure exhaustion I’m sure. Of course, when she woke up she instantly wanted to nurse and would do nothing else until I gave in.

I’m exhausted (and can I just mention a pet peeve here? Aaron forgot to make coffee this morning, the one morning this week I truly needed the caffeine. It’s just as awesome as it sounds), and am surely in for a long night again tonight, especially since I’m off to a Sheryl Crow concert that doesn’t start until 9:30 so I won’t be getting into bed until way later than normal. Here’s hoping tonight goes well, although I have my doubts, especially since she’ll be missing the before-bed nursing visit too. The plan is to cut the mid-night feeding out this week, the morning feeding out next week, and the bedtime feeding out the few days before I leave.

I really never thought it would be this hard, or this emotionally tough, especially since my heart’s not totally in it. It’s time though, it really is. I just hope Gabbie eventually agrees.