Natural Progression

"If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together. There is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you."
~Winnie the Pooh

My baby is growing up!! She is now two months old, and I am no longer producing enough milk for her :(

She is still fussy after I have fed her off both sides and have started supplementing with formula, when I know she's hungry and I have nothing left. This makes me sad for two reasons, (maybe more, we'll see how long I ramble). Okay, first of all, it's just one more step of my baby growing up, needing mommy less, because once she's fully on formula anyone can feed her. Also, she is my last baby, so this will be the last time I get to experience the most natural thing in the world... feeding my baby the way God intended. I truly feel breastfeeding links me back to all the generations of women before me that nursed their children. How many hundreds of years have we been doing this very thing??

And I feel that from the time our children are born, they slowly begin the process of leaving us. Which is naturally what happens when they grow up, if you do a good job. They become self sufficient, productive adults that can rely on themselves. And this is step one of my baby leaving me. WAaaaaaa! :'(

I know that this is what she needs, and I have given her a good head start. Breast feeding is much easier (no sterlizing or mixing, or heating, or purchasing!) Although there is also a certain freedom that I know I will enjoy once I am able to leave the baby with my husband for more than an hour at a time.

I suppose that is the progression though, as she grows up and becomes more her own person and needs me less, it leaves me the freedom to reclaim all the time and things we mothers sacrifice of ourselves for our children. It just makes me ache a little inside to know that one day, will be the last. And it seems that in the beginning I resent having to give up the freedoms that I used to enjoy, I have to take the baby with me everywhere I go, I am 100% responsible for her 24 hours a day 7 days a week. But once that same responsibility is taken from me, I am sad, and it makes me think that one day, I will look back and miss it, and realize that I didn't take the time to enjoy it.

Funny thing, I was thinking the other day, how the "young" kids don't appreciate their own beauty, like when I was 18-25 I remember thinking how chubby I was and not fully appreciating my youth. But how can you when you don't know anything else? Now that I am getting older, I can look back and say that I didn't appreciate the energy I had, the body I had, and all the freedoms I had.

So I suppose I should enjoy the last few weeks of nursing my child, try to be more present in the moment when I am feeding her so that when I do look back, I will know that I experienced it the best I could, and enjoyed the bond with my baby girl to the fullest extent. They change so fast and grow so quickly and there are already things about her that have changed, the way she looks around and focuses, the way she kicks her legs and waves her arms is less jerky and more smooth, and these changes are so subtle that we barely notice til they're gone.

I think I repeated myself alot in this post, but if you notice the title, I am a rambler, and what it all boils down to is that I need to accept the change that will inevitably come with a child growing up, and enjoy every moment as it comes, because the moments are so fleeting.