The Decision to Wean: Pick a start date!
Backstage at Bohemia, a selfie I sent my family before heading home for the night.
January 20th, 2023 11:30pm.
“Mama’s here, you’re safe.” I’ve just washed off my makeup and our almost two year old is crying for me while my husband waits, holding the remote, with an episode of Suits on pause. It’s the crossroads of a breastfeeding artist mom.
I gently open the bedroom door, collapsing onto my young son’s floor bed, three mattresses spanning the room. Nestled in a fuzzy grey blanket, Hero rubs his eyes and finds my nipple to nurse. Mixed feelings accompany the milk. I just performed back to back shows of a demanding musical, why couldn’t Christian handle the wake up? I just got home! Then again, so did he, relieving the sitter after 10 hours at the restaurant.
“No more Nurse at night on February 1st.” I announce, prompted by Bohemia’s final performance. Truth be told, I’ve been ready to start weaning since Thanksgiving, when my bosses at the theater Nordo announced they would be closing both of their venues. My world was falling apart, my career changing, and I couldn’t share myself in the same way with Hero. I was irritable every day as I continued to yield to the demands on my body. But the ease of nursing, and the sleepy sweet connection my son and I shared was very hard to quit.
My dressing table station at Nordo’s Culinarium, ready to move out. My theatrical home from 2016-2022.
Nurse’s final scene played out at 2am (or was it 6am) on Sunday the 23rd of July. Yes, 7 months of weaning! So sweet, so personal. And I was so done.
“It’s like they are mine again!” Christian jokes “They’ve been off limits for so long!”
It’s one of those jokes that could turn serious, until I laugh. “It’s true, though!” WEANING WAS ROUGH ON THE GIRLS! They were bruised and scratched, but they were badges of honor. I did it. Hero did it.
But how did it all go down, you might ask? This is the first of several blog posts that will chronicle our journey. I feared that night weaning would mean my son screaming and fully awake for an hour in the middle of the night before collapsing from exhaustion on my body – tight and tense from protecting my chest. I imagined dealing with weaning while rehearsing all evening for my cabaret gig. No thanks, push the impending transition to another bedtime, please.
But his second birthday was on the horizon, in early spring. And this Artist Mama responds well to deadlines. I made the decision to gently wean him before my next production, The Fairy’s Bottom, began that summer.
Back to February 1st, the first night of weaning:
“I need to talk to you about bedtime tonight, Hero.”
“Nursey Nigh’ Nigh!”
Hero’s cocoa brown eyes lock on onto mine, a mix of panic and longing. He throws his thirty pound body in my lap.
“Just Nigh’ Nigh’” my Chef reminds, sitting on the dinosaur beanbag chair, a copy of Little Blue Truck open on his lap.
Hero plunges his right hand down the neckline of my sweater. The t-shirt and sports bra beneath only slow his fingers momentarily before they find my left nipple.
“Hero want Nursey. Dada no.” In his 23 months alive our verbal child has more words than we can count and is very easy to understand on the basics, wanting to nurse, needing to sleep, he’s thirsty he needs his favorite truck, no not a car, a truck, and not a tractor, a tanker.
I block his fingers with mine and press my cheek against his powder soft forehead as we sway together. He whimpers and thrashes his legs. I move him to meet my eyes. “Nurse needs sleep tonight, just like Hero and Mama and Dada need sleep tonight. Nurse sleeps too. There will be Nursies in the morning” I quote from the library book we’ve been reading, “You can come to the big bed in the morning, but if you wake before then, just feel your cozy, cozy bed and know that you are safe and Mama and Dada are just in the other room, like when you nap. If you call for me, I will come, but know that there will be no more Nurse at Night. We can snuggle and go back to sleep that way.”
Hero doesn’t look at me. I brush my finger under his chin. As hard as this is for him, It is hard for me. When we have a good night in this weaning process I am on top of the world. I hope he is too.
“What a big boy! You slept in your own bed without Nurse til 5:30am!”
“Yes, but you were in there with him” My Sweetie points out, pragmatically.
“Only from 1-3am, I counter.
Christian and I on a date night out. Nothing fancy, nothing really was during this weaning period.
April 2023. Down to one early morning feed.
It’s 4:30am when I hear “Mama!” on the monitor. I’m laying on my stomach on our King, in all my layers. Like a firefighter, or a surgeon. I snuggle against Christian’s back, my phone tucked under the pillow. Sometimes I fantasize that tumors, like a mycorrhizal network, appear wherever my phone touches my body at night. As motherhood progresses, these intrusive thoughts have developed their own personalities. This is the Night Mama.
I grab the phone and check the time, noting that it’s an hour earlier than the previous morning. Screaming on the inside, I try and keep these thoughts, any thoughts, at bay as I stumble the ten feet between our bedrooms and slowly open the nursery door. Hero holds his arms out to me and I sweep him into my breast. Nurse is ready. Every fiber in my body feels relief to have him tucked into my left arm, over my heart.
“Other one! More Nursey!” As we settle into the big bed, I chuckle at his demands. My other hand rests on Christian’s sleeping back. As Hero drinks and makes little satisfied sounds, I feel as divided as we are close together. I know it’s time for me to be finished breastfeeding, but this is such precious time.
We will drift in and out of sleep as a family for another hour, at which point Hero will ask to watch videos of Hero on my phone and I will scoot us out of the big bed back to the nursery so my chef can get another hour of rest before his long day in the kitchen. I’ve just started an intensive script writing process for The Fairy’s Bottom during the evenings so once again, progressing on weaning is holding in favor of Mama getting the most sleep and putting my theatrical work on top priority.
Myself and my choreographer Katheryn Reed at an early production meeting for The Fairy’s Bottom in April 2023.
Writing a series of blog posts about weaning a toddler is mostly for me. But it’s also my hope that another artist mom may be in a similar situation and benefit from my experience.