My breasts are big for the first time in months. I will have to pump all this milk out since I drank wine last night.

The plan was to give it up, she is now one year old, and even has a tooth is coming in.

 I don’t want to get in to the whole debate about how long women should nurse. Everyone I talk to is different. Some can, some can’t. Some nurse for days, some years.  I don’t believe it means they love their children any less whether they do or not, and if someone does it for ten years, I don’t think that makes them Super Mom.

This little piece is about me. Me and my inability to let go of my girl’s last tie to her infancy- our last physical connection.  First she came out of me, then they cut the cord, and she didn’t belong just to me anymore, I had to share her with her father, aunts, friends, and her sister.

That was fine. A lot of the time I felt I just wanted a break and the times others took her was welcome. At first so was the baby food, ripped up pieces of chicken and juice cups that now substitute for my milk. She is a happy healthy girl. Several weeks ago she started to get restless at the breast and started talking to me mid latch, or she would roll around and pull off in search of something more interesting to do.

There’s not much in there as a rule, I know. At this point she is humoring me.

The thing is that when I am done with her I will be done for good. It makes me so sad, it is so sentimental and sappy but there it is. I don’t want to give up the last thing that only I can do with her.  I know that no good can come of it; all that will follow is her growing up, up, and away. Down the street on her bike, to her friend’s houses for sleep overs, to her husband’s home, and then finally somewhere I won’t even be able to reach her by phone, she will be too busy for me raising her own kids, handling her own family’s crisis and dramas. School, swim lessons and her own goals will interfere with her attention for old mom. Sniff. I can’t take it; I just want to keep her with me forever.

How strange that at other times I have fantasized about these same things and the freedom I will have when she is old enough to be on her own.

I didn’t think this would be so hard.

 “She wants the Boobie.” Only a few months ago I was groaning and rolling my eyes when daddy told me this, sometimes when I had to do something for myself that couldn’t wait.

When I imagined being home this time around, not having to pump at work and fit nursing in around that schedule- I assumed separation anxiety was just the unpleasantness of the working life. How could I be so naive? Just because I am home with her doesn’t mean I can stop her from growing up.

I miss her. My girl. My tiny, squawking, screeching, smiling, almost walking little thing. She is done, ready to move on to the next stage of separating from mommy, moving on with her life, I miss her now and am afraid of how much more I will miss her when I can’t even entice her to the breast with a few pulls of what used to be her favorite drink.

The part of me that hurts when I think about giving up nursing is the same part that panicked the last days of my pregnancy, when at the same time all I wanted was to have her out- to have my body back. I was so conflicted then, missing her at the mere thought of separation. This same irrational part of me, the same part that overrode my sense of independence and talked me in to having one, then another child when I swore my whole life I wouldn’t have any.

“There are too many people in the world already, why should I add more?”

I can’t bear it, I tell you, I can’t bear it.

Don’t judge me to harshly when you see me in the mall still nursing a six year old.