Conflicting Emotions

All day I was painfully aware that D.'s bedtime was approaching and with that, our first bedtime without nursing.  It was a good day - swimming class together which we enjoy so much and some playtime and snuggling before afternoon rest time.  He enjoyed his bath (as always) and then we were at the moment in time when we sit down in the rocking chair and nurse as the light grows dimmer and dimmer.

Except tonight it was milk in a sippy cup.  Thankfully he didn't balk at it probably because he's been enjoying milk in a sippy cup at rest time.  Plus I made sure he was holding his blanky which is his version of I.'s baby bear.  We sat in the rocking chair with him lying sideways up against me and since he wanted to hold the cup, I was able to wrap both of my arms around him holding him tight.  First I went through what we did today and what was fun about it and then I sang to him for another 10 minutes.  We looked up at the trees in the window moving in the breeze and watched the light as it grew dim.  I felt twinges of sadness but pushed them away and just enjoyed our closeness, thankful for my usual bundle of nonstop motion allowing me to hold him so tightly and for so long.  I took the milk and then finished with the same 3 songs that I sing him at naptime and rest time and by then he was completely relaxed and his eyes were struggling to stay open.  When I put him in his crib, he just laid on his stomach still holding his blanky and went to sleep.

My emotions are so conflicted.  I am so relieved and happy that he didn't cry, he just took it in stride without looking back.  I have been praying for God to give him comfort and that he would not be sad.  Of course, I prayed for the same exact things for myself.  I am so thankful that he feels soothed by me, not just my breast, that I can make him relax and sleepy just by holding him and singing to him.  He felt secure and warm and loved enough to accept the change and fall asleep.  That knowledge fills me with joy.  It makes me feel like as a mother, I am doing right by him and that I am giving him a really great start in life to build upon.

But the joy is mixed in with a huge dose of sadness and I have to stop after almost every sentence I write to cry a little more into a tissue.  This is the road D. and I have been on together for 18 months (today!) and it was not an easy road many times but I was not going to give up though there were so many physically painful moments plus others pressuring me/suggesting to me to go to bottle feeding.  I'm glad for my stubbornness (maybe one day I'll be glad for I.'s stubbornness?!) because it allowed us to get all the way down this road.  And while it is so hard to be standing at almost the end of the road, because we still have our wake up nursing for another couple of weeks, if I turn around and look at the road we have travelled and the tender, beautiful memories that I will always have and have written about in this blog for posterity, it's worth the sadness now.  It doesn't lessen the pain, but it makes it worth it.