Separation while extended nursing

I fig­ure I’m a lit­tle unusual in the mod­ern, west­ern world.  At 25 months, my son Oliver is still breast­feed­ing, and last week­end was our first extended sep­a­ra­tion since his birth.

I’ve left Oliver for a few hours before, even for almost a full day, but he’s never spent a night with­out me.  I was a lit­tle wor­ried how the week­end would go.  Was my hus­band going to be up two nights in a row with our incon­solable son? But I was only going to be an hour and a half away and I really wanted to go to the expat blog­gers in Ger­many meetup that was tak­ing place in Munich.  A Mace­don­ian friend, who tells me that extended breast­feed­ing is com­mon and never went out of fash­ion in her home­land, warned us that my hus­band was going to have a cou­ple of very rough nights.  I thought, at the very worst, he could pack up the car and join me in Munich.

I left Fri­day morn­ing and the day went well.  Rainer com­plained a lit­tle that he was always hav­ing to get Oliver lit­tle snacks or drinks through­out the day.  My aunt had also men­tioned dur­ing her visit that when­ever I went to sit down, I was hav­ing to get up again to go to the kitchen for some­thing.  “Wel­come to my world!” I said.

Oliver took to call­ing my hus­band, “Mama,” so appar­ently “Mama” is just the name for who­ever he deter­mines is the pri­mary care­taker!  (He does call me “Nina” when I don’t answer to “Mama,” so he under­stands that that isn’t my name.)  Falling asleep went with­out a hitch, although Rainer thinks he may have fallen asleep before Oliver.  Oliver woke once dur­ing the night, got up and looked in all the rooms, then lay down in the hall­way cry­ing.  Rainer picked him up and took him back to bed and he went right back to sleep.

My hus­band is the less enthu­si­as­tic of us about cosleep­ing (he does still like it though), and usu­ally wants me to get Oliver to sleep in his own bed, which is next to ours.  Oliver loves his bed and is quite happy to sleep there, but Rainer had Oliver sleep together with him in the big bed while I was gone.  I was a lit­tle sur­prised by this, and am start­ing to think Rainer may just be a closet cosleeper who doesn’t want to admit to how much he likes it.

The rest of the week­end went sim­i­larly, the next night, the same thing hap­pened.  Oliver woke once, went look­ing for me, cried, then went to sleep again.  We talked 3–4 times a day on the phone and he was happy to hear from me, say­ing only, “Mama… mama” on the phone, but he didn’t cry at all.

In our last breast­feed­ing ses­sion before I left, I really con­cen­trated on remem­ber­ing every­thing about the moment.  I knew there was a chance that this could be the last time Oliver breast­fed.  I was sad and real­ized that even though I occa­sion­ally get annoyed with his still very fre­quent breast­feed­ing, I wasn’t really ready to give it up yet. I fig­ured on my return, I wouldn’t offer, but I wouldn’t deny.  I’d just see what Oliver wanted to do.

Dur­ing the trip, my breasts didn’t feel sore at all until Sat­ur­day night, or about 20 hours after breast­feed­ing.  I hand-expressed into one of the hotel glasses and poured the milk down the sink.

I arrived home on Sun­day after­noon and found I didn’t need to worry about wean­ing.  As soon as I sat down, Oliver climbed into my lap and lifted my shirt.  He spent much of the rest of the day on the breast.  I was glad to find that he wasn’t ready to wean either.

How was your first extended time away from your child?  Did it go how you expected?  Or have you cho­sen not to separate?

You may also be interested in reading:

• Breastfeeding after reduction surgery - the second time around (0)
• Victoria's Secret has nursing bras (18)
• Thoughts on Parenting (2)
• The Bottle of My Dreams (3)
• Review: Nursing Tops (4)

Tagged as: Breastfeeding, cosleeping, separation, toddlers