CherylKatz.org

I sometimes feel bitter thinking about all the occasions on which I’ve brought friends from separate worlds together, only to have them go off and forget me.

Even now, I still sometimes feel that twang.  But I’ve come to realize that ultimately it’s not the worst thing.  In most cases, I’ve brought people together who might otherwise not know each other, but who really belong being friends.  And when I am wearing my completely truthful hat, then I must admit that the friends who drift away are not the ones who are necessarily the best choices as friends for me.  (I don’t mean people who are busy, which includes me.  I mean people who can’t find motivation to reach out every once in a while.)

People who don’t love spending time around kids, people who disapprove and/or disagree with my parenting/lifestyle/fashion/etc. choices, people who don’t share compatible interests with me, all fall into this category.  (I mean, if I knit and you scrapbook, we can be together and do those things.  However if I like to ride a bike and you like to row a boat, not so much.)

Relationships can be made to work over distances and differences, but only the ones worth keeping tend to be maintained in reality.   I really treasure the friends who have stuck with me and made it work.

This may seem like Social Behaviour 101 or something, but to me this is all new territory that I’ve only recently come to terms with.  I’m not very good at letting go.

I’m starting to be able to look at it as a positive thing, and feel joy for the people who moved on without me for the rich new friendships they’ve found.  No one is going to assign “credit” for this, and I’m certainly not going to try to claim it, but it is rewarding to have had some active, if circumstantial, part in others’ happiness.

In fact, I’m actually pretty good at matching people up.  That’s something to be proud of; good judges of character are tough to find.

Re-reading this post, I realize I’m kind of rambling.  Oh well.  Just had some mental runoff waiting to happen.

Because of the fires in San Diego, our day care center was evacuated for proximity to the fire zone and for resulting air quality. I had my daughter with me for the entirety of last week.

I’m the only person in my department, so ultimately I had to bring her to work with me to at least complete the bare minimum of keeping-my-department-above-water tasks for the week. (Which, with a mobile one-year-old around, was about all I was able to accomplish with maximum effort.)

Normally Sami and I nurse only at night and in the morning. I nurse her when I pick her up from day care, after dinner, before bedtime, once in the night, and in the morning before we get ready to go. During the day she eats and drinks solid foods at day care, and from the reports I get, she is quite the little eating machine.

But on the weekends, when we are together practically nonstop, she is not as interested in solid foods. I still offer her regular meals and snacks, but she is more likely to chuck food on the floor and ask for nursies when I am around.

So my boobs are thinking something like this:

Monday! We’ve been making milk all weekend to keep up! Make lots and lots of milk! (Where did the demand go?)

Tuesday! Aaaahhhh… demand dropping off. OK, we’ll slow down production during the day. No problemo.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, blah blah blah.

Saturday! Arrrgggh! WTFBBQPhDMSBSQ! Where is all this demand coming from! Produce produce produce!

Sunday: Keep on chuggin.

Monday! We’ve been making milk all weekend to keep up! Make lots and lots of milk! (Where did the demand go?)

And so the cycle normally goes.

But with a week of constant togetherness, my milk production is pretty royally out of whack. So today is Wednesday. And it appears that my body is confused, because LAST wednesday we nursed all day. In fact, we nursed for pretty much nine days straight, through a cold, no day care, and a reduced solid food consumption. Getting back on our normal weekly roller coaster of nursing is proving to be difficult.

I know that it’s just time before my body catches on that things are back on more of an even keel. However, at 10 AM today I found myself hand expressing into a coffee mug, trying to find a balance between relieving the painful pressure and encouraging more milk production. I actually momentarily considered pumping milk to send to day care with Sami, but she really gets enough milk with the nursing we do all night and every morning. I fear she’ll be nursing until college if I don’t encourage her to eat big-girl foods when she is open to doing so, like at day care. Furthermore, pumping doesn’t ease my weekday oversupply problem, only exacerbates it.

So I will have to wait this one out.

I still maintain that there is nothing more disappointing to the mom of an exclusively breastfed baby than dumping liquid gold down the drain. It’s so hard to get up to production speed when the kidlet is first born; I’m still conditioned to feel as though every drop is sacred. With a toddler on the eventually-one-day-weaning track, I just have to get over that.

It started for me when Sami could finally crawl - she didn’t need me to get around any more. That was a small step, so joyful and not as bittersweet as the developments yet to come.

A month ago, Sami started sleeping in her own room. After an initial adjustment period, she sleeps better and I sleep better when we are in our own respective beds. I miss her a lot; at times it’s all I can do to keep myself from bunking down in the twin bed in her room, and when she wakes mid-night, nurse her back to sleep cuddled up. (Truth be told, when she wakes for her 4 AM feeding, sometimes I do fall asleep in there. But that isn’t by design, and I recognize that it’s not the best thing for separating our sleep habits.)

Letting go affords us both a better night’s sleep; hanging on lets me feel closer to my baby for a little bit longer. I’ve chosen letting go, because I think that’s what every mom must learn to do gracefully, and because I think it’s better for us both in the long run.

Besides, if I hang on to babyhood, how do I find out what comes next? Toddlerhood looks like it’s going to be pretty cool.

Going to day care and then preschool are next steps in her growth from a baby to a kid. While I’m wistful about the transition, it’s exciting to see her take off, form relationships with other kids, and ultimately to watch the ways in which she needs me change.

She eats real food; she doesn’t need to nurse all day long. She walks, and doesn’t want me to carry her (as much, anyway.) She expresses herself through babbling, gesturing and signs, and doesn’t need me to trial and error her needs any more. She’s turning into a real little person with not just personality (she’s had that all along) but her own unique ways of interacting with and conquering her world.

Letting her sleep in her own room, letting her to go to educational environments where she can play and learn with other kids, letting go so that her world gets a little bigger; this is all practice for the bigger steps I’ll have to take, like letting her go to the mall with her friends, letting her drive a car, letting her get her first job, go to college, move away from home.

I’m just thankful these changes all come in stages, and the stages go quickly. There isn’t time to mourn the last change before a new one is upon me.