I’m in a cafe, “working”. That’s in inverted commas because I forgot to take my ADHD medication this morning, so now working looks a lot like scrolling the internet and chatting to my mates and wondering why I can’t seem to find any fun clothes right now that aren’t from Next. (Also searching for new kids’ clothes because kids’ clothes are so fun to buy but truly my children have more than enough clothes so what am I even doing?!)
A woman has come in and sat across from me. She’s drinking an iced latte, which I suppose is a choice I understand, as it’s 30 degrees outside today (and it’s not even noon), but I’m just not an iced latte person, especially since I went on a GLP-1 and became someone who’s cold almost all of the time. (The only exception is when I’m sitting directly in the sun, like a snake.)
She’s drinking her iced latte and she’s swaying from side to side and it’s kind of noticeable because it’s, you know, a kind of dramatic sway. And while I generally try not to stare at people in cafes, I look up and I realise she’s got a tiny baby in a Solly Baby wrap on her chest and suddenly the swaying makes sense.
I swayed for the first nine months of Roman’s life, mostly because I was wearing or holding him for 20 out of every 24 hours. But then I did it even when I wasn’t, because when you get in the rhythm of something it’s hard to get out. I’d find myself standing and swaying, or standing and rocking the buggy, or standing and tapping my arm because tapping his bum also seemed to soothe him and sometimes I was so tired I couldn’t quite figure out whether he was in the buggy or out, or in the wrap or out, and the risk of not swaying was much greater than the risk of swaying, just in case.
When I was in it – in those heady, colicky days when he didn’t want to be put down at all, whether it was on someone or beside someone – I wished for very little other than for this time to be over, even though so many (well-meaning, I’m sure) arseholes would say things to you like, “just don’t wish the days away; they’ll go by so quickly!” and you’d think, yeah, with any fucking luck they will, you dickhead.
Why should I be forced to feel bad for wishing away a time in my life that is exhausting and draining and stressful?! And no matter how many people tell you that some babies just cry, and some babies just don’t like to be put down, and some babies just don’t sleep for long stretches (or even medium stretches), when you’re in it – in the mire of sleeplessness and aching shoulders and worry and holding your pee because when you sit down, even on the toilet, even for two minutes, the baby wakes up – it’s hard not to think there’s something wrong. Wrong with the baby, and wrong with whatever it is you’re doing (you can’t call it parenting or mothering, because those words imply correctness and, like I said, you’re definitely doing something wrong, because why else would your baby be crying non-stop?!). Just wrong.
(She’s stopped swaying now and is eating a sandwich and seems not to be dropping crumbs on the baby which, honestly, is Olympic-level skill, right there, and I would tell her, except that I remember the time I went to the library with Atlas and Roman and Roman was crying and Atlas didn’t want to leave so he was running from me – and then started crying – and a woman came up and told me I was doing a good job and then I was crying, too.)
It’s weird, though, how biology or our brains (or both?) work, because now, when I see a woman with a baby in a sling, I don’t really remember – not properly, not viscerally – the back pain or the exhaustion, I just remember the smell of Roman’s head and the feel of his soft little body cocooned against mine, and I think, not with any small amount of sadness (I wouldn’t go so far as to call it grief), I miss that.
He’s 19 months old now and we don’t really cuddle much, unless the conditions are absolutely ideal: we must be sitting on the couch, in the evening, or right before nap time; he must have his little rag in hand, a burp cloth that’s turned into a comforting blankie by virtue of its always being present when I was breastfeeding, to mop up the excess milk that would inevitably drip down the side of his face; there must be nothing more exciting going on in the house, a condition that is more rare than ever now that we have kittens running around, kittens who are never more entertaining to him than when they’re being squashed, sat on, or some combination of both.
He’s still nursing, before naps and bedtime if – and this is a big if – I’m in the house. When I’m not, he doesn’t really seem to miss me. He gets put in a long-sleeved onesie and zipped into a sleep sack and someone who’s not me holds him and rocks him and sings him a song or two, and he closes his eyes and sucks his thumb while the other hand holds his rag and rubs it over his eyes and his nose and his cheeks and, once those three things have happened, he’s ready to be put down and he rarely complains.
When I’m there, the nursing takes the place of the singing – although I suppose I do sometimes sing to him while I’m nursing – and when he’s done nursing he replaces me with his thumb and he rolls away from me to indicate, “okay, now, I’m ready now”.
When Atlas was his age, he would nurse all day long. We’d sit on the couch, side by side, and he’d start to rummage my top until it was up and the bra was down and he’d press his sticky little body up against mine with my boob in his mouth and he’d watch the TV while he nursed, his face slightly angled to the side, eyes firmly affixed on the screen.
Sometimes, I’d have to gently tell him that I thought he’d had enough – usually around the time Dwayne Johnson says “well, honestly I could go on and on” (if you know, you know) – and he’d grumble a bit but he’d accept that, until, inevitably, an hour later, the boob would be back in the mouth again and he’d be happy, suckling away as he watched Moana for the hundredth time.
Roman is a different child altogether. He has zero interest in my boobs – or in me, I suspect – except when he’s in his room, with the lights off, about to lay down for a nap. Even when he puts his hands up to be lifted, mouth open, saying “aah! aah!” which I could interpret as “up” but also could mean pretty much anything, as it’s the only sound he makes, the main way he communicates what he wants, no matter what that thing is, he is using me as a means to an end.
He wants to get up to reach whatever contraband has caught his eye at any given moment: the remote, maybe, or the unsuspecting kitten, or the packet of grated cheese someone has left out on the counter, not remembering how quickly that cheese will disappear, 50% of it in the bellies of my small children, the other 50% on the floor, or in the crevices of the high chair (or both).
His appeals to me – to be held or to get up or to get down or to get this or that – always feel like means to a different end. He is, as my friend C once remarked (about my dog, to be fair) “always on the take”.
This doesn’t hurt my feelings (although perhaps that statement in itself is telling), but I do think it contributes to my sense that Roman’s and my relationship is somehow less close than my relationship with Atlas was, at the same age, and is now, as a result of that continuing closeness.
Roman has recently started sleeping through the night, having, until about two weeks ago, been consistently waking up three times nightly to nurse (again, a perfunctory exercise).
We decided we’d like to wean him, not just because I couldn’t remember the last time I slept a whole night through, but also because I have some upcoming travel as part of one of my new social media gigs, and I’d rather not have to bring my 19-month-old along. (There’s nothing I like more than a solo flight – several undisturbed hours in which to read my book.)
When I told my husband that it was time, that we needed to night wean him which – because I couldn’t see another way to do it – would involve him going in to Roman whenever he woke up, instead of me, rocking or singing or soothing him back to sleep without the aid of nursing, he responded, “Well, that’s going to be very tough on me.”
There have been a handful of moments in my marriage (thus far) that, I think, could have ended in justifiable homicide, and this was one of them.
“The last four years,” I responded, “have been pretty tough on me too, you know.”
“I do know!” he protested. “And I’m not denying that. I’m just saying this is going to be tough on me.”
As it happens, it was tough on us both. For 10 days, Roman woke up twice or three times, a night, and cried – and when Brandin went in to calm him down, he cried harder, and when, eventually, he fell into a fitful sleep and Brandin tried to put him back down in his crib, he woke up and screamed.
I’d told myself that the most important thing was not to give in, not to go into him – even though I lay awake in bed, listening to him crying, and found myself dying to go in, knowing that I had in my possession the thing that would stop his crying, that would put him back to sleep in an instant, that would make him feel loved and held and comforted, all at once, and sure, I thought to myself, what harm is it doing me?
But, like I said, I have this travel coming up – and while I could, I suppose, bring him (free flights for under-twos, you know), there would then be the issue of what to do with him once we got there. It’s not like he’d be happy to sit on the floor and play with blocks while I went to meetings and, in any case, he can’t be within two feet of a keyboard or he loses his mind altogether, just dying to tap, tap, tap at the keys.
So we toughed it out, and he’s now sleeping through the night, waking some mornings at 9.30am, even 10. He’s been unzipping his sleep sack and getting his legs out, although the arms are proving a greater challenge.
I’m still nursing him before naps, when I’m there, and at bedtime (I’m almost always there) – but next weekend, I will go to the airport for a five-day work trip, and he’ll be left to fend for himself (or, rather, Brandin will be fending for them both).
I don’t have a breast pump any more (I gave it away in a Facebook group for moms), so I won’t be pumping while I’m away; I do have a little vacuum pump I can stick on my boobs if and when they become uncomfortable, so I’ll pack that in my carry-on and hope for the best. When I get back, five days later, I won’t offer to nurse him again.
As I say this, I feel immense guilt. I feel like I’m forcing him to grow up too fast, as though I’m severing this last link between us before he’s ready, because I just had to take this job, because I have to take this trip, because I need to feel as though my body is my own again, after almost half a decade of its being dedicated to someone else. (Two someone elses.)
I’m prioritising my own health and happiness over his, and that feels wrong. (I’m doing mothering wrong, remember?)
Atlas breastfed until he was two and a half, at which point I was pregnant with Roman and was too uncomfortable to carry on. Considering he’d been so attached to the boob, he adjusted well.
Occasionally, now, he’ll come in while I’m nursing Roman to sleep and he’ll ask if he can have some milk, too, and I’ll say “sure”, but when he puts his mouth to my breast, it’s as if he’s forgotten what to do. He blows raspberries; we laugh. He goes back to whatever else he was doing.
In a way, it’s galling to me that neither of them will remember these months, years I gave over to their needs – although, as I write that, I suppose I had needs, too. I craved their closeness (even when I didn’t); breastfeeding releases oxytocin, which I could always do with more of; it gave me a great excuse to come home early, to give into my homebody tendencies, to turn down invitations I didn’t really want to accept, anyway.
Things are different now. I no longer want to hide from the world (I don’t think I suffered from postpartum depression, but the depression that I’ve always suffered from has definitely been present throughout), and I yearn for a freedom that means being able to stay out even if it means missing bedtime.
As an avid declutterer – sometimes as a sign, honestly, of my ailing mental health, which in the past has manifested as my divesting myself of every item of clothing that made me feel fun or as though I might ever have somewhere to go – I’m also very excited to throw all of my nursing bras in the bin (although that also feels wasteful; as I type this, I can’t help but wonder, could I not use them to make some keepsake bears?!).
I recently invested in some grown-up bras – I own this Panache bra in two colours and it’s supportive and cute and keeps my boobs completely separated, which is important as, of late, I can’t bear anything to be touching them, even each other; I also own two of these Elomi bras, which also boast full bra separation and come in quite nice colours (in the battle of Elomi vs Panache I would say I feel like the Elomi is marginally more comfortable but the Panache gives a slightly nicer shape, which feels a manifestation of the eternal bra struggle) – and am looking forward to the day I can wear them without having to unfasten them from the back in order feed Roman to sleep (nursing in a non-nursing-specific bra is especially annoying because the boob I’m not nursing from often leaks, and unlike my trusty Target nursing bras, my glam bras are all handwash only).
This all feels rather self-serving, and selfish, in the way that, I suspect, only women feel that prioritising their needs is selfish. I think, too, that this is a sense of guilt that is heavily emphasised by the Irish, a kind of don’t you love yourself insinuation that makes any decision based in what you, as an individual human being, want – rather than, say, what’s best for your kids, or your family, or your community in a more general sense – feel somehow dirty, or tainted.
Anyway – here we are. I’m not taking Roman with me on my upcoming trip. And when I get back, I’m not going to offer him “milk?” at nap or bedtime any more. I’m not sure I’ll ever not feel a tinge of guilt at this decision, but I do know that, with time, that tinge will fade to an echo.
The true irony of motherhood is that, while two pregnancies and the subsequent sleep deprivation and stress have absolutely decimated my memory, and often my ability to remember the word I want to use, or the point I’m trying to make, that kind of maternal amnesia never strikes in a way that would be helpful. If there was a god, wouldn’t I forget all about these moments of guilt and shame and feelings of maternal inadequacy, instead of the names of women I’ve met half a dozen times (and quite like), or whether or not I’ve read this or that novel?! (Between this and the success of Mel Robbins, though, it’s clear that god does not exist. In this TED Talk I shall, etc.)