i wanted to ‘password-ize’ this entry coz of the erm, what some may feel is the rather ‘unsavoury’ business of boobs. (i can picture the guys’ eyes turn round as saucers, but don’t worry, they will be duly disappointed if they read on.)

but it’s pretty groundbreaking news.

what i want to talk about is something close to my heart (literally)… yes, you know where i’m getting at – tekmilk and aniq’s tek-pendency.

and what i want to announce is:

we have officially, successfully, and surprisingly, painlessly, weaned off each other, tek-wise.

!!

let me recap my journey of tek-hood.

the lil fella gulped down one full year of BM aka tekmilk (of which he’d staged a strike against the bottle for a few weeks in his fourth month before begrudgingly succumbing to the inevitable silicone teat and sterile bottle when i went back to work in the fifth month).

one full year of lugging around my borrowed pumps (and a perpetual love-hate relationship with them).

one full year of nursing bras (and sweaty breastpads, till i stopped buying them and ended up with the occassional wet tshirt – no, no, it’s definitely not the stuff of fantasies, boys, it’s very – i repeat – VERY unglamourous and tak stim langsung).

one full year of revolving my life around his feeds (and not leaving him behind on dates and outings for more than half a day if i can help it).

as soon as we reached that first-year mark, i knew it was time to let go. so the day after he turned one, i’d begun him on his FM journey, the last he’d tasted it being at the hospital when he was born.

then the thirteenth month came along, and again, he staged a similar coup – refusing the bottle with the ‘offending’ FM. (dah satu bulan minum baru tau lain ke? haha!) it’d gone along fine at first. i’d cut down my pumping sessions, so that he still had half BM and half FM per day, and direct feeds in the mornings and evenings when i was around. it’d also become a force of habit for him to automatically turn to the teks as soon as we stepped into the coltmobil aka BFmachine. ho ho! a sticky situation we have here, i thought…

then a friend advised me to mix the BM with FM, gradually lowering the amount of BM and increasing the FM till he gets used to it again, and that actually worked when i was not home. on weekends, i began bringing him out with a bottle of FM and a steely resolution, as well as a bag of distraction tactics, eg. gave him biscuits to make him thirsty, showed him the scenery, whatever it took to make him forget.

my mum and i reckon that this happened to be the period that he fell ill (fever/cough/runny nose) and his body was probably instructing him to get more tekmilk to boost his immune system. well, that’s what we THINK anyway. plus, his gums were swollen at the time, and his appetite to eat had gone down too.

but he got better, and every weekend thereafter, i increased the FM, and limited direct feeds to morning and evening. i stopped pumping altogether early this month, as i slowly let my supply dwindle, from 200ml… till the last i pumped, a mere 80ml.

i have to say that my body did take some time to adjust. there’s a case of what O told me was the ‘blip’ (no, i’m not censoring anything, that’s what it’s called, apparently, but i can’t seem to google anything on it). it caused lumpy blocked ducts and i had no choice but to make him (and by him, i mean aniq) solve the problem for me.

you always hear that bedtime feeds are the hardest to drop, and i really thought so too. but he continued to surprise me by accepting a bottle of FM before bed (distraction tactic: tv!), and proceeded to do his other nightly routines of reading some books and rolling around in his cot till he falls asleep by himself. i always thought he couldn’t sleep without the teks, but i was wrong! just like the time i was proven wrong when he slept through the night all by himself in his own room at 8 weeks.

i think, perhaps, he has this… intrinsic independent streak that has made him a relatively ‘easy’ baby, in a sense. we’re blessed, i’ve no doubt about it. of course, with his strong desire to be independent, comes other not-so-easy problems! like… immediately running off the OPPOSITE direction whenever we put him down (and not even looking back to find us). wanting to do things by himself although he’s not physically capable of doing them yet (think sofa stunts and messy meals). and you know, with a gungho little person like this, the possibility of him getting into all kinds of trouble and accidents is MASSIVE. :S

anyway, i never really set myself a target as to when to wean him off totally, and if i felt that he really needed comforting, he’ll still get them. coz that’s what they’re only good for now, comfort. (that refrain, “everybody need a bosom for a pillow”, suddenly comes to mind, heh.)

so, that day we went to the parade, was also the first time he went without the teks throughout the day. he didn’t ask, i didn’t offer. and for those of you who know us well, would know that this is big news coming from the TekBoy himself! :D

and the coltmobile is now a safer place because he’s stopped clambering out of his carseat to get to my boobs. of course, distraction tactics are still at play – a small box of cornflakes at his side to munch on, a frisbee to bang on, a straw to chew on, a mini magna doodle to, err, doodle on, a ball to throw around. however, mum was clearly disgusted by the state of the backseat of coltmobile when she rode on it yesterday, and promptly nagged and picked up stray cornflakes crumbs and other tiny swallowable objects i’d dropped while wrestling the lil fella. (mothers! we can never do anything to please them, can we?) :D

he now drinks up his FM with relish and anything goes. gain IQ, dugro, enfagrow… bedal ajer lah!

so there. my glorious BF days are, hmm, i guess… over.

i don’t feel hungry anymore.

disgusting tummy flabs have made threatening comebacks.

my boobs have shrunk back to it’s dismal borderline B. (Boohoo!)

but thank you. you’ve been of good service for almost 15 months. i’ll miss the times we had.

till the next round…. ;)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Announcement, Breastfeeding, Parenthood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.