Weaning was easy; too easy, in fact. Maybe she had been ready to let go too.
Sometimes while I'm nursing her sister, Beatrice crowds in just to bury her head in my chest. It feels good to have Beatrice back there, nuzzling me, droopy-eyed and content. We still talk about what she remembers. I ask her what it tasted like. "Sweet, like you," she says. She tells me she sometimes misses it. "I wish you would have nursed me until I was eighteen," she said the other day, only half-joking. I was cradling her baby sister, who held a breast between her two chubby fists, pulling and sucking with the familiar, desperate abandon of an infant ready for sleep. I had the glassy-eyed look of a tired mother with heightened levels of oxytocin coursing through her. "Come on," Beatrice asked, "can't I nurse just one more time?"
Beatrice's sister turned a year old last month. We're still nursing, of course. But it's hard to imagine going another two years — in fact, I can't imagine my youngest sustaining her interest that long. She's easily distracted by her big sister. I also can't predict when we'll stop. There won't be a pregnancy to bring about a tidy end. No more pregnancies. No more breastfeeding. It's an idea so enticing I sometimes think I can hardly wait. Other times, I'm already nostalgic for the years that my body belonged to what seemed like everybody else but me.
photo courtesy Schoichi Aoki
©2006 Madeline Holler and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Madeline Holler is a writer and mother of two. She lives in Long Beach, California. |
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