Here’s a post I wrote two years ago – March 2012 – but never published. Ironically, I still feel pretty much this same way. I have a hard time writing about my kids these days because the moments feel so precious, and so fleeting. But I want to be writing about them. Isn’t that the whole point – the writing them down allows me to hold on to them? So here’s this post, two years later.

Emry in March 2012, 17 months old

I haven’t written specifically about Emry in a little while. There’s a reason for this. My baby is growing up fast, and I’m awfully emotional about it.

He was such a baby for such a long time.

He got his first tooth at 14 months.

He was a dedicated crawler, not interested in walking until recently.

He was a mellow and happy baby.

I loved it.

What can I say? I love the baby phase. I adore the snuggling, the holding, the way I could meet all his needs. Now if I had a colicky baby, I’m sure I wouldn’t love this phase. But Emry has been a dream baby. The kind of happy, smiley, mellow baby that makes women swoon and check their own ovaries.

He’s still a dreamy little guy, but he’s becoming more of a little guy. He’s growing up. He’s got 3 teeth, a slow progression documented by nicknames: from “the one-tooth wonder,” to “the two-tooth terror,” to “the three-tooth troublemaker.”

Content with crawling and standing, and cautious about being on his feet, he didn’t begin walking in earnest until just about a month ago, when he was 16 months. In the last few days, he’s gone from cautious tottering as a party trick to splitting his locomotion about half and half between walking and crawling. His walking is getting more confident. He’ll try out new surfaces. Elan got excited yesterday as he watched Emry walk “in a curve!”

And now, he’s decided that he’s done with nursing.

This is breaking my heart.

Tomorrow he turns 17 months. He’s quite old enough to stop nursing. We’re only nursing a few times a day at this point anyway – before nap, before bed, and the occasional nighttime, morning or mid-afternoon times he needs a little comfort. Elan was 18 months when he stopped, so I assumed Emry would be similar.

And yet. I am so not ready for this.

Not ready for my baby to grow up. Not ready for our relationship to change. To go from being the source of comfort to the source of discipline and comfort.

I love to nurse. I know not every woman feels the same. I know I am lucky to have had a good experience with nursing. It was painful in the beginning with Elan, but I had good help and kids who were good at nursing. I might have gigantic, ungraceful pregnancies, filled with never-ending nausea and heartburn and varicose vein stockings, exhaustion and back pain, but at least I was good at nursing. Whipping out a nipple – for food, for comfort, or just for a little break in the energy of the day – felt effortless to me, once I got the hang of it with my first baby. It was nice to have something in parenting that felt easy.

Nursing Emry on the beach, Washington state, September 2011, 10 months old

I remember when Elan stopped nursing, I thought Now what? Holy crap, I’m going to have to get some parenting skills. And I was right. Because nursing was a cure-all, for me and for him, and it has been for Emry too. And while I’m not the cluelessly inexperienced parent I was four years ago, standing at this crossroads for the first time, I don’t want to give up nursing. I like our times snugged together, his hands playing with my hands, my fingers seeking out the soft, tiny wrists, watching his eyelids grow heavy, his breath become even and regular, as he begins to drowse. I like the way our bodies still fit together, like pieces of an ever-changing puzzle. Measuring how he’s lengthened against my body, the size of his kneecap against my palm, the sturdiness of his calf, the stretch of his foot.

In the beginning, I would rest his entire body on the pooch of my postpartum belly while we nursed. The remnant of his former home was the perfect shelf to support him as he grew into his new world. He was such a nursling then, his whole life circling around milk, and a great part of mine too. We spent hours in the rocking chair by the sliding glass door, aware of the world on the other side of the glass, but not really part of it. This first month, when my mother was here, taking care of the worldly parts of things, I was aware how amazing a retreat it was to snuggle down with my new one. His brother came home from school, full of the bluster of the outside world, seemingly impossibly huge.

As time went on, life got busier. My other responsibilities came back into focus, then grew. Emry went from laying in his vibrating chair, checking out the world, to engaging in it – first on his tummy, then sitting up, then wiggling around, and finally he became a full-fledged crawler, fully able to cause respectable amounts of 1-year-old chaos. Desire propelled him. Desire for things. Desire to get stuff. Desire to possess.

It’s all normal. It’s all good. I’m so happy that he’s developing and growing, just as he should. Of course, I would be devastated if he were not. But I’m sad too. He’s my baby, most likely my last, and it feels bittersweet to move through these phases that I will probably never return to.

The smallest size I could find, and still too big for his tiny feet

I’ve been avoiding writing about this because it hurts to go there. My heart feels a little raw in these spots, too vulnerable, too open. And life is busy. And life is happy. It’s easy to not go there, to focus on how exciting it is that he’s walking, the new words he’s saying. It’s easy to not go there. Except then I walk around with this little raw spot on my heart, and something little rubs against it, and I think Ow, why does that hurt so much?

And then I put him up against my breast, for the countless millionth time, to nurse before his nap, and he turned his head away. A firm no. A firm Not interested, Mama.

I tried again at bedtime. He wriggled away from me. I didn’t know what to do. Felt a rise of panic in me, What now? Tried again. Still no. So I stood up and held him and swayed in the air, singing, while he sucked his thumb, his mouth inches from my heart.

I didn’t want to pump, but I did. My right breast felt uncomfortable, and it relieved a little pressure. I put the ounce of milk into his purple sippy cup, along with the cow’s milk, and I watched him drink it, knowing it might be the last time he drank milk from me too. And then I got busy making breakfast and getting Elan’s lunch together, and the purple sippy cup was empty. Because that’s the way this is. You pay attention, you relish the moment, and then you look away because there’s shit that has to get done, and when you look back, the moment is over. The children are grown in some new way, that part is done, and you don’t get to go back, except in your memory. So I try to relish the moment. I try to pay attention. I try to be there, and to stay patient, and to show up for them the way I want to remember having shown up for them in the littleness of their childhood.

But it’s imperfect, of course. Because I’m not perfect, and they’re not perfect. And despite their angelic faces, sometimes they fuss so much at me that I slam the kitchen door and step into the driveway and mutter cursewords under my breath and try to calm down. And despite my best attempts, sometimes I yell. I get impatient. I get frustrated. I tune out. And, because it’s good for me to get a break, and because it’s good for our family for me to make some money, I leave. I leave for work. And they’re fine. I’ve got a fabulous babysitter who they love. She has even won Elan over. And it’s good for all of us for me to leave. But sometimes I am not there, and Emry learned how to go to sleep without me nursing him, he learned it easily, and now that’s what he’s doing and I wonder if it’s because I leave him for a whole day, so he doesn’t need me so much anymore. And isn’t that the purpose of mothering? Eventually, so they will leave you?

Good god, what a beastly job.