Stopping Breastfeeding

I've avoided writing about breastfeeding for ages.

I've avoided it because I clearly don't trust myself to be honest enough or informed enough and all the while it's very hard to convey my breastfeeding journey without it sounding like advice. And this was never supposed to be the advice blog.

Regardless, in response to a big week in my own breastfeeding journey, I'm swallowing these fears and insecurities and talking about breastfeeding today.

Because Euna and I ended our breastfeeding journey this week. Why did it end? Well it was just our end. I'm happy with the timing and I'm really happy to report she has taken it totally in her stride.

Me though? It seems I have a little wave to ride. If I go back a way, to when Euna was born, breastfeeding was hard. Seriously hard. Crying everyday for a fortnight through pain and guilt and lack of guidance hard. But I stuck with it and it got easier, then it got wonderful and then it just became really normal.

Of that journey, I am very proud. I am proud of myself for persevering, I am proud of Steve for supporting me through something that must have been even harder to understand for an outsider (considering I didn't really understand so much of it myself) and I am proud of Euna for being this brilliant and wonderful miracle of nature who seemed to be the only party involved that knew exactly how to make this all go down.

And now it's finished.

And I grieve for it, quite genuinely. I'm sad to say goodbye to the final chapter of her babyhood. I'm sad that something her and I have so uniquely shared as mother and daughter is over. I'm a little frightened that it could change our dynamic. I'm a little heartbroken at the prospect of this meaning I am a little less special to her now. I can't help but feel a little unappreciated at the prospect that something so huge to me and my story of motherhood will be forgotten by her.

There in lies the selflessness of motherhood I guess. I can't ask anything of her in this. Just because I gave and I sacrificed and I worked hard does not mean I am owed. Of course not. My goal was a healthy, beautiful and happy daughter and I got that. My rewards are the memories, the story and the knowledge that I tried.

Then it sounds less selfless... I've written myself out of immaturity again. No woe is me. I got everything and more I could of hoped for.

Euna, I'm just letting you know it was special and I love you. xxx

And we have so so SO much more to enjoy... Like our first proper living room den! 

 Euna-zilla!

Still time left on my JOULES FABULOUSLY FLUFFY SOCKS GIVEAWAY!!! Go go go! :D