‘It came back’

It was a tough night last night.  Charlotte wondered into our room around 1:30 gasping for air.  She wasn’t breathing well and it reminded me very much of Cooper’s episode and trip to the ER.  Chris gathered her up and took her to the hospital, and was home just shortly after 3—super fast!  They gave her a treatment of steroids and a diagnosis of croup (along with the same diagnosis for all of us…croup in adults is a bad congestion and cold like symptoms, while in children it causes swelling of their airways).  They gave her the game Candy Land because she was so cooperative and polite!  They told Chris that 10 min in the bathroom with a hot shower running, or 10 min bundled in cold weather should help with breathing.  If it doesn’t, then bring her back.

While Chris was gone, Cooper woke up with a fever and was attempting to cough as well, but was mostly just cranky and restless.  Between worrying about Charlotte and taking care of Cooper I got hardly any sleep.  I went to work late and the kids had a very lazy, very cuddly day with Daddy on the couch.

Okay…taking a detour for a moment…I don’t think I mentioned that I weaned Cooper a couple months ago.  It was fairly uneventful, but I had reached a point where I dreaded nursing and there was absolutely no enjoyment from my side anymore.  In fact the idea of continuing to nurse and the actual act of doing so became nearly revulsive to me.  It was a very strange feeling and not how I wanted to remember nursing.

I began preparing Cooper for the upcoming change and for a couple of weeks before we started cutting nursing out of the bedtime/naptime routine, I told him that the milk would be all gone soon, but that we could still cuddle.  I started changing our routine to include more reading time, some singing time (although that ended quickly because he would cover my mouth and say ‘top, mama, top’…tells you what kind of singer I am!), and some extra cuddle time.  Then one night he just didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t offer it.

The next week he didn’t ask for 3 nights out of the week.  The following week I just didn’t let him nurse when he did ask for it.  It was heartbreaking the first couple of nights because he would cry and beg to nurse, but I would tell him he drank all the milk and it was all gone.  He just cried in my arms for several minutes before calming down and asking me to lay down in bed with him.  After a few nights he went from crying to laughing that there was no milk.  Then he stopped asking every night.

Now 2 months later, he still asks for mama milk a few times a week but easily accepts, ‘it’s all gone, you drank mama milk all gone’ and sort of giggles about it.  (I actually think he expects my breasts to go away since I don’t have any more milk.)  So the whole point of me bringing this up is that now that he is sick, he is asking for mama milk over and over several times a day and he is very sad when I tell him it’s all gone.  I  know he just wants the comfort, so I tell him we can cuddle instead.

Tonight when he asked for mama milk and I told him it was all gone, the crazy smart kid says ‘Yeah, it came back.  Mama milk peeze.’  What the heck am I supposed to say to that??