For the first time in three babies I can name the date of the end of the nursing chapter. I usually know the month, but this time I know the day. I weaned E on April 7. I had been wondering if it was time. He was starting to seem like he could do without it. And I was dealing with some hormonal health issues that I thought would be helped by weaning. So I took a friend's advice and just tried to end the nursing relationship cold turkey. . .just to see. We were down to one feeding a day anyway. The bedtime feeding. So at bedtime on April 7, I read a few books to that sweet little boy. I held him close. Josh came in and we said the thing we say to every child, every night, and have been doing it since the beginning: Mommy loves you, Daddy loves, GOD loves you. The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you and give you peace forever. Amen.
After we said all this we put him in his crib and said goodnight. It went so smoothly and so easily. He didn't protest at all. And that's when I knew I had officially weaned. That's when I knew my nursing days were over and who knows, they may be over forever. I don't really like to say, "I'm done having babies" because it sounds too pushy I guess. I can say what my plans are, but we all know what God says about human plans, and predicting your future. So I guess I should say we don't plan to add on at this point.
It's a very strange feeling. It's also strange when you realize you have devoted 61 months of your parenting life to nursing relationships. 15 months with C, 22 with A, and 24 with E. Yes I do feel a sense of accomplishment. That's okay right? And as I look back on those 61 months, you know what? No regrets. Not a one. This was one area that I felt like I could give 100% to. This was one thing that always made sense to me. This was something that seemed like a good idea, no matter which angle I looked at it from. I didn't think breastmilk was some sort of magic potion that would keep my child from getting sick. I didn't think nursing would turn me into my skinny self again (although it did the first time, but has yet to do that the third time!). I didn't think nursing was anything magical necessarily. I just always saw it as nature's way I guess. It seems to be one of the most innate things ever. It never occurred to me to work though my options I guess. Anyway it cost more $ to do it another way and it's not as convenient. If something appeals to my "path of least resistance" side then I'm pretty much sold! Plus I could get my babies back to sleep quickly with nursing. It was a quick fix in the middle of the night. It was always a great short-term solution even though, in the long run, it was a solution that meant they didn't sleep through the night for awhile.
I did get the occasional comment of course. Some people either think nursing is weird altogether, or they think it's weird past the six month mark. So you can imagine their looks when they heard I went past the first year and beyond.
Motherhood is a tough job. There are so many gray areas. There are so many things that I don't know if I'm doing well or right. But this was just one thing. One thing that made sense. One thing that worked, even when it wasn't "working." And by that I mean, even when I knew sometimes it was nursing that was to blame for my woes, I still saw it as the best bet. Nursing meant sleeping less and being clung to a little more than usual. Nursing meant more giving of myself- literally- for the sake of another. But even on the days where (in my emotions) I was wishing the season were over, I was (at the deeper level) not ready to end it. As long as nursing was something that my baby seemed dependent on, it just never felt right to end the relationship. And now here I am with 5 years of nursing throughout 8 years of parenting. It's a good feeling. It's a strange feeling. And it took 4 days before it hit me that it was over. On April 7 I weaned. On the following Monday I wept. And wept some more. Like I haven't wept in a very long time. Like the kind of weeping you do after you give birth and postpartum hormones are at work. Oh those hormones! They are to blame for so much. Yet even without them, we know we're soft. We know we're tender in a whole new way.
Motherhood. It's always changing. It's always redirecting me. Yet it's the most constant thing in the world! Love and blessings. Every single day.
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
Tuesday, January 5, 2016
A January Kind of Feeling
I take January's bait. . .hook, line, and sinker. She's the first month, the fresh start, the unopened present. I get inspired to do all the things that lagged consistently behind me the year before. The things I thought about a lot, intended to do, wanted to do, but that always got bumped for the necessary, the practical, or the urgent.
This year something really is different though. While 2014 and 2015 were marked by a sleep deficit, I think 2016 is going to have something else: Energy. Back in October, I started sleeping somewhat closer to the patterns of normal people. And you know, I may as well have started taking Prozac because that's about what the difference feels like.
If a mom tells me she's tired and it's hard, I'm going to take her really seriously. Just because she doesn't say it with crocodile tears and large hand gestures as if to REALLY show you what it feels like. . .well that doesn't mean she's okay. She may be in real darkness. And it may be scary. Hear the mamas, mama. Let's all listen to the mamas!
And well anyway part of my new year's ideals were to get over myself more and show some compassion. This was inspired by some resentment toward a situation in which compassion felt lacking. And although I suppose resentment is not a good place to spawn good behavior, it happens to be where it started for me. It's like after you talk to someone who talks about themselves a lot. Like so much that you can't even believe it. Well after that you might walk away and determine to talk about yourself as little as possible. Maybe never at all. Because you just really don't want to make someone else feel how you just felt. And then you kind of go back toward the middle of the road and say, "Okay maybe I'll talk about myself. It's probably inevitable. But I'm at least going to try to be a listener. You know, maybe even find out if I can take a genuine interest in someone else's thoughts. And let's see if I can stay there, in THEIR storyline, without passing the ball back to myself. Hmm let's try that out and see what it's like. Surely only good can come from LESS of me and MORE of others. Right?"
I do believe so.
Listening is hard. So is loving your neighbor in the kind of careful attentive way you love yourself. I guess that's why Loving Thy Neighbor is up there as one of the two greatest commands. It's just too hard to master. There's just no way to do it without flinging yourself onto the resources of Someone Else.
The other thing that's different about this year is now we have a new widow in our lives and for me, the widow is a big deal. James was blunt enough to tell me true religion has to do with the widows. Tim Keller says James is being ironic or something for using the word religion there at all. Because the religious Pharisees would never have visited widows and orphans. And I know I can't do everything for every widow, but I can do something for the two we have in front of us.
We gained one widow which now makes two. Because we lost a widow in 2015 too. She's not in need anymore, Hallelujah. But we miss you like crazy Memaw.
I put a flower on her grave the other day. I thought it would be a simple thing, but I had to sit in my car and swallow a few times. It's just never something you get over -- death. You just don't. You aren't supposed to I guess. Death screams in your ear that the world really is fallen. It's broken and creation is still groaning. Why does Hope have any meaning if you can't look at death and brokenness? Why do parents avoid talking to their kids about death and sadness? How boring is the whole gospel if the need isn't DRAMATIC and SEVERE? Tell kids about the ugly stuff sometimes. Don't shelter them too much. If you do, the gospel sounds ho-hum really.
Something strange is happening to me. I am learning a sort of apathy. A sort of contentment without groping for it. Sometimes I preach to myself about all the stupid things I'm annoyed at or mad about.. . . . but the preaching just can't get through. I just can't seem to snap out of it. There was this apathy about certain stuff that I wanted but I just couldn't find it. I still fixated on all the wrong things. The apathy was that grit your teeth kind that you really, really want, but it's just not making its way at all into your bones. But now it's happening. It starting to become that kind that bubbles up and over and out. It's that kind that comes when you finally catch a glimpse of the fact that God really is who He says He is. And circumstances and people really don't have to rule over your spirit. There's a good side to apathy. . . so long as it knows where to plant itself.
This year something really is different though. While 2014 and 2015 were marked by a sleep deficit, I think 2016 is going to have something else: Energy. Back in October, I started sleeping somewhat closer to the patterns of normal people. And you know, I may as well have started taking Prozac because that's about what the difference feels like.
If a mom tells me she's tired and it's hard, I'm going to take her really seriously. Just because she doesn't say it with crocodile tears and large hand gestures as if to REALLY show you what it feels like. . .well that doesn't mean she's okay. She may be in real darkness. And it may be scary. Hear the mamas, mama. Let's all listen to the mamas!
And well anyway part of my new year's ideals were to get over myself more and show some compassion. This was inspired by some resentment toward a situation in which compassion felt lacking. And although I suppose resentment is not a good place to spawn good behavior, it happens to be where it started for me. It's like after you talk to someone who talks about themselves a lot. Like so much that you can't even believe it. Well after that you might walk away and determine to talk about yourself as little as possible. Maybe never at all. Because you just really don't want to make someone else feel how you just felt. And then you kind of go back toward the middle of the road and say, "Okay maybe I'll talk about myself. It's probably inevitable. But I'm at least going to try to be a listener. You know, maybe even find out if I can take a genuine interest in someone else's thoughts. And let's see if I can stay there, in THEIR storyline, without passing the ball back to myself. Hmm let's try that out and see what it's like. Surely only good can come from LESS of me and MORE of others. Right?"
I do believe so.
Listening is hard. So is loving your neighbor in the kind of careful attentive way you love yourself. I guess that's why Loving Thy Neighbor is up there as one of the two greatest commands. It's just too hard to master. There's just no way to do it without flinging yourself onto the resources of Someone Else.
The other thing that's different about this year is now we have a new widow in our lives and for me, the widow is a big deal. James was blunt enough to tell me true religion has to do with the widows. Tim Keller says James is being ironic or something for using the word religion there at all. Because the religious Pharisees would never have visited widows and orphans. And I know I can't do everything for every widow, but I can do something for the two we have in front of us.
We gained one widow which now makes two. Because we lost a widow in 2015 too. She's not in need anymore, Hallelujah. But we miss you like crazy Memaw.
I put a flower on her grave the other day. I thought it would be a simple thing, but I had to sit in my car and swallow a few times. It's just never something you get over -- death. You just don't. You aren't supposed to I guess. Death screams in your ear that the world really is fallen. It's broken and creation is still groaning. Why does Hope have any meaning if you can't look at death and brokenness? Why do parents avoid talking to their kids about death and sadness? How boring is the whole gospel if the need isn't DRAMATIC and SEVERE? Tell kids about the ugly stuff sometimes. Don't shelter them too much. If you do, the gospel sounds ho-hum really.
Something strange is happening to me. I am learning a sort of apathy. A sort of contentment without groping for it. Sometimes I preach to myself about all the stupid things I'm annoyed at or mad about.. . . . but the preaching just can't get through. I just can't seem to snap out of it. There was this apathy about certain stuff that I wanted but I just couldn't find it. I still fixated on all the wrong things. The apathy was that grit your teeth kind that you really, really want, but it's just not making its way at all into your bones. But now it's happening. It starting to become that kind that bubbles up and over and out. It's that kind that comes when you finally catch a glimpse of the fact that God really is who He says He is. And circumstances and people really don't have to rule over your spirit. There's a good side to apathy. . . so long as it knows where to plant itself.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Now That Caitlyn Has Arrived
So two women make it through Army Ranger school, but Caitlyn Jenner makes it to “Woman of the Year.” Somebody help me out here.
Am I the kind of woman who hopes to graduate from Ranger School? Nope. Do I find it impressive that two women pursued such a thing and succeeded? You bet. Would I like to be named “Woman of the Year” by a magazine? No thanks. Do I find it disturbing that a man becomes a woman and now claims the title “Woman of the Year”? You bet. Of all the women in the world, this is who we name. This is who gets the recognition. So we have Bruce who FEELS like Caitlyn and decides to do something about it. Inspirational! Then we have Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver who CHOOSE to rise above the stereotypes, push their minds and bodies to the limit, and successfully graduate as Rangers. Yawn.
So Caitlyn says the hardest thing about being a woman is “figuring out what to wear.” She says this while women all around the world push tiny humans through their bodies. Women all around the world endure mastectomies and hysterectomies and go on to find out just how strong they really are—just how much strength exists in their dignity. Women all over the world make unique sacrifices and bear cultural burdens. Some fight just to survive. Some face the horror of gender apartheid and cold discrimination. Some women climb tall ladders of success and conquer odds. But what’s really terrible is when they can’t find a single thing to wear! The horror! And it’s just cruel trying to keep up with changing styles and trends. These are women’s woes. This is the dog in our fight.
But Caitlyn is happy to be on this team.
She says, “I am SO glad to be on this team and help it along!” How nice. According to Caitlyn, “The power of the woman has just not even been unleashed around the world.”
She says, “I am SO glad to be on this team and help it along!” How nice. According to Caitlyn, “The power of the woman has just not even been unleashed around the world.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kristinharris/caitlyn-jenner-the-power-of-the-woman-hasnt-been-unleashed#.xfbdPokwo
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