Unweaning Georgia

Issue 152, January-February 2009
By Jenna Hull

Four years ago, when I found out I was pregnant with my first child, I had no knowledge of breastfeeding. I didn’t know how it worked. I didn’t know if I could do it, if I wanted to do it, or even if I was comfortable enough with myself to let my mammary glands be used for their primary purpose. Until then, they’d been used in only one way: the way that got me with child in the first place. Breastfeeding hadn’t really crossed my mind since I was a young girl, when I overheard neighborhood ladies clucking over Dorothy and Karen, who nursed their babies.

According to those ladies, Dorothy was breastfeeding her children only to keep her bust size large, and Karen was morally suspect for breastfeeding her three-year-old. Despite their gossip, 
and even though I was only ten, I imagined a mother and child in a cozy snuggle, finding peace and warmth in 
a nursing embrace.

Fast-forward 20 years. I found myself the single mother of a baby girl. After much contemplation during this pregnancy, I decided that I would breastfeed exclusively, bypassing formula altogether. With this choice, my daughter, Georgia, thrived, and I nursed her for nearly two-and-a-half years. I became pregnant with baby number two, and was just entering the second trimester.

Fast-forward again, this time six months, to the arrival of my infant son. The good news was that he was happy, healthy, strong, fantastic, oh so sweet, and thriving on mommy’s milk. The bad news was that my three-year-old daughter had changed.

Up till now, the always strong-willed Georgia and I had had a happy, loving, reassuring relationship. But with the birth of baby number two, even though I thought I had prepared her for her new sibling, she became jealous, mean, snotty, and intolerable. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t seem to get her to understand that I loved her just as much as I loved him.
Explanations about a mommy’s capacity to love all her children were useless. In vain were detailed talks with Georgia about how I used to take care of her when she was a baby. Photographs and videos of Georgia and me, taken during her infancy, didn’t help. My head was spinning: My adult brain was telling me that she should be consoled and reassured by my repeated, rational arguments, right?

Wrong, and yet another fine example of my mothering mistakes: thinking that my three-year-old daughter understands everything I say. But not only was Georgia confused, hurt, and angry, I was too. I needed to find a solution to our dilemma, because our life was quickly becoming unbearable. Clearly, my reassurances and explanations—short-, middle-, and long-winded—were getting us nowhere.

Then I had an idea that seemed to appear out of nowhere, but that I now know was a suggestion from my heart.
I thought of letting Georgia nurse again. I wondered if that would show her the love that all my words had failed to explain. After all, I reasoned with myself, she’d been weaned only six months before. What about unweaning her?
My head was not slow to respond: Are you crazy? What would the world think?

I remembered having read, somewhere along the way, that here on planet Earth, the average age of child-led weaning is about five years. By that statistic, Georgia might have two more years of nursing to go.

But again, my head bombarded me with panic and ridicule. I questioned whether or not I could unwean my toddler and tandem-nurse her and her baby brother, or if I even wanted to. If I didn’t want to, did that make me a selfish mother? And what about the ever-popular social theory that breastfeeding mothers come up against in this country: that if children are old enough to ask for the breast, they’re too old to have it? Georgia certainly was old enough to ask for it.
Was I comfortable enough with myself to let my three-year-old nurse again? I actually found this challenge the easiest to come to terms with, because the secondary purpose of breasts—the one that gets you pregnant in the first place—was not exactly uncharted territory for me. If my mammary glands had been explored by men for nothing more than pleasure, why should it be disgraceful to allow my three-year-old daughter to nurse for love and reassurance? I couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t explain it, I had no example to follow, and yet I felt that, somehow, unweaning Georgia would help us. Just do it, I chided myself again and again. Do it. Do it.

But I couldn’t just do it. Amid all my gut instincts, I also felt doubt, fear, and resignation. I didn’t want to tandem nurse. I didn’t want a nursing toddler. And I didn’t want any more pressure and judgments from the outside world for making yet another unconventional mothering choice. I already felt like an oddball among my family, friends, and peers for such things as having my children at home and cosleeping with them. I felt like a teenager struggling with peer pressure. But here I was, an adult woman, worrying about what the world thought rather than listening to my hunch to unwean Georgia and just see what happened.

So after much thinking, reading, and consideration, I did do it: I decided that, when the opportunity was right, I would unwean my walking, talking, cognizant sprite of a three-year-old. I was able to come to this decision when I realized that I didn’t have to justify my mothering decisions to anyone—not to the world, my friends, my family, or my coworkers, and certainly not to the memory of those ladies of the neighborhood. I just needed to do what was right for my child and me. My heart had told me to give breastfeeding her another try. 
It was just that clear.
So, after yet another crying session with Georgia laden with anger and frustration, I asked her if she wanted to nurse. At once, her tears stopped, and she nodded. The baby was napping, so the time was right to give unweaning a try. We settled on the couch and I cradled her in my arms. Her shoulders relaxed, her face softened, and she nursed. Automatically, her hand went up to my hair, 
just as it always had.
At first I was anxious, as I felt all of my old worries return, swarming around my head like buzzing bees. However, they vanished as soon as I saw how happy Georgia was after nursing. Her happiness helped me realize that I’d made the right choice for both of us. It was then that 
I realized that I, too, was happy.
My hunch to let Georgia nurse again couldn’t have been more right. Although life with two nursing children isn’t always simple, it was now markedly better. And as her tantrums and jealousy decreased, Georgia began to openly demonstrate affection for her brother.

Unweaning Georgia was not without its kinks, but I learned as I went along. If she had had her way, she would have nursed on demand, but the new baby made that impossible. Here was another unforeseen challenge—now that Georgia was nursing again, I didn’t want to immediately give her the message that her wanting to nurse was bad. So I delicately set up some nursing boundaries, and, again, things improved.

After Georgia resumed breastfeeding, she nursed until she was four-and-a-half years old. Her second and final weaning happened almost without our noticing. One day, when a friend asked me how nursing a preschooler was going, the question took me by surprise. I realized that Georgia hadn’t nursed once that week, or the week before. In fact, I couldn’t remember if she’d nursed in the past month. At that moment, I realized that she had reweaned herself, and that our nursing relationship was now completed.

As for me, I’ve realized that the world will continue to think what it pleases without asking me for my thoughts and opinions. Therefore, I need to live my life as I please.

Unweaning my child was not something I thought about until I was deep in the trenches of motherhood, searching for a lifeline. Too many times on this journey of motherhood, I have been pressured by the outside world to conform to its definition of the norm. But mostly I have not conceded, and because of that, I feel that I—and my kids—are stronger, happier, and healthier.

As I reflect on the mothering choices I’ve made, I think of my renegade neighbors, Dorothy and Karen, who breastfed their children at a time when bottles and formula were all the rage. Twenty-five years later, as 
I breastfeed a toddler, I know full well 
that it is anything but all the rage, and, 
a generation later, I salute them.

Jenna Hull lives in northeastern Ohio with her two spunky children, Georgia and Trent, and ever-faithful dog, Emmy.

Photo provided by the author.