This is it, y’all. Baby’s last bottle, because I don’t have a baby anymore, I have a toddler. More importantly, it’s his last draft of mama’s milk. He doesn’t know it, but I sure do. I built my son with my body in my body for eight months then nourished him strong a full year. He’s gained 20 pounds and 13 inches since birth. Yeah yeah, some of that is solids, but still. He self-weaned before nine months, and I’ve been pumping five times a day ever since.
Every. Day.
Up at 4 AM, agonizing over every ounce, surreptitiously turning off my camera during video chat meetings or talking to customers on the phone while the pump wheezes in the background.
DONE. I froze enough milk to ease off in November and stop completely by Thanksgiving, presently still in the throes of haywire hormones that ironically, cruelly, mimic first trimester morning sickness. But I’m close — so close! — to my body being mine.
And THIS KID. I gotta stop gushing, I’m prolly hella annoying, but I’m so proud of us both. For this final drink, Arthur and I sang him his nursing song that I wrote while in the hospital and that we’d forgotten about for months. I wept and laughed and hugged L tight. Impervious to the fuss, he slammed the milk per yoozsh then gave a groaning grunt of satisfaction.
We ended the chapter and started the next one.
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