Today I’m taking a teary selfie. After 3 hours of breastfeeding, crying, yelling and stress Jack finally fell asleep. You see, he has to share me now and it’s got us all turned upside down. Jack nurses to sleep. All the time. We’ve tried to change this since nursing aversion set in, but Jack is not taking to it very well. Today we tried nursing to sleep for his nap, but I just couldn’t deal with it anymore when he wasn’t asleep after 30 minutes. I had to stop. Jack freaked out, crying and yelling. This woke up Exley. Now I had to tend to both of them. It was a mess. Jack got more and more tired, more and more upset and we all lost our shit. He was begging to nurse, but today I’m just feeling the aversion so bad. All of the work we have done toward weaning/boundaries seems useless with Jack, my sensitive little boy. He cried so much for me. Finally I got Exley to sleep again and put Jack in the carrier. He liked this and quickly fell sleep. I doubt he was far from passing out anyway. I checked Facebook as I walked around and read the comments under “I Am Going to Miss You” that I shared earlier. I decided to read it again. And now I’m crying. All over again. The mess of this afternoon fresh in my mind. Hugging this boy who needs me so much. This boy whose life is changing so rapidly. He must be so confused. Everything is so different now. Just as I knew it would be. The adjustment to a family of 4 is still here for us. We’re struggling. Some days are good, some bad. Today terrible. My tears are dripping onto Jack’s cheeks. Mixing with his own. We’re holding on tight to each other. It all seems so hard, so chaotic. I worry so much that I’m not enough for him.
Abby Theuring, MSW
