So, some people were wondering how I closed the milk bar over here at Casa Asshole. The first time, Franny was eight months old and I was frantically trying to finish my bachelor’s degree. It was summer quarter and I had a morning class and an evening class. Normally I came home in the space in between, to have lunch and nurse her and do my studying at home, before having an early dinner and then heading back to school. One day, I told her father, Seattle Federline, that I was not coming home during my long break. That was cold turkey. I brought a flannel shirt with me that morning, because I knew it would be a chilly summer evening. I studied and noodled around during my ten-hour break, and by the time my evening class started, I was feeling feverish and light-headed, but I was a real Tracy Flick in those days, so it didn’t even occur to me to go home. I sat in the back as usual and watched the pretty colors on the slides and pretended to take notes.

Suddenly, my shirt felt cold and wet. My right breast was exploding, and the nursing pads were doing absolutely nothing to stop the torrent. Most of the front of me was sopping wet. Before the lights went up, I snuck into the flannel shirt I brought and went home. I had days of pain and engorgement, and I didn’t know about cabbage leaves then. My sister remembers me complaining that I felt I would never go back to normal, and then one day I did.

This time, with Strudel, I had cut down on nursing to the morning nursing, the evening nursing, and I gave her one nursing before her mid-day nap. As I mentioned a few days ago, on last Saturday I woke up and realized that I had not nursed her for about twenty-four hours. I enlisted my companion to give her a sippy cup of warm soymilk immediately after she woke up, in place of her morning nursing. I also made a point to keep my hooters covered up for the next few days so she wouldn’t see them, which I think helped. She would struggle in my arms to get into a nursing position, which was painful for me physically because she’d get frustrated and beat my breasts while she was flailing. I would usually hand her over to her dad (if he was at home) or try to distract her with a toy or book.

Other than that, we just kind of soldiered through. We had an immediate setback in that a couple of days after I weaned her she got a horrible intestinal thing that lasted for almost a week, and I was a little tempted to put her back on the boob, because she felt so awful. But she made it though that. And today I looked at myself in the mirror in one of my old pre-pregnancy bras and a tee-shirt, and I realized I no longer look like a cartoon character. And my boobies don’t get in the way anymore when I cook or fold laundry. I lost two cup sizes in a week. I haven’t seen a c-cup since I was sixteen. YAFUCKINGHOOEY.

Something weird happened that I didn’t quite expect: on Saturday, after more than a day had passed, I got kind of feverish again. I had this strange feeling in my arms and hands like I wanted to grab Strudel and hold her in my arms and take her to my breast. I could almost feel my hands clenching and unclenching involuntarily, like I was reaching for her. This time, the pain of engorgement lasted from Saturday to Friday.

Strudel saw her old friends as I was coming out of the shower this morning and looked a little puzzled, but she didn’t cry or reach for me, because she was snug in her dad’s arms, which has become a more desirable place.

While weaning last week, I looked at articles here, at iVillage.

Bad:

1. Guilt over quitting nursing “early.”
2. Pain during semi-cold-turkey weaning.
3. Strudel sadness, which was actually pretty brief.

Good:

1. No more cartoonishly large boobies.
2. She likes her dad more now, and finds him more comforting. When she was sick this weekend she reached for him a lot.
3. My energy’s back, and now my tether is longer! I am going to Portland alone next weekend, bitches.

“Rules” and advice I followed while weaning:

1. I used cabbage leaves a lot.
2. I started on a weekend, so I had my companion to take the little screamer away from me.
3. I took lots of ibuprofen.
4. I took lots of naps.
5. I dressed in my pajamas for days and basically treated myself like I had the flu, because I felt like I did.
6. I ate ice cream and drank Irish cream. Seasonal drinks are good for morale.
7. I did not bind my breasts (bad old advice) but I kept wearing my nursing bras because they were comfortable. I went back to wearing my old sleeping bra which I had abandoned because I had stopped leaking at night a couple of months ago. The less they moved, the better they felt.
8. I took hot showers, which some people say you should not do. I love hot showers, they make me feel better, and the slight leaking I did in the shower helped with engorgement, I think.

I hope this helps some poor suckers out there, and suckees, too.