“Even with the support of a therapist, I was astounded by the fact I had never heard of what weaning might be like,” says Eva, who is also a therapist and based in London. Eva weaned her son, whom she bottle-fed after pumping milk, slowly after nine months. But even the gradual reduction in milk supply didn’t prevent a complicated web of emotions. “It truly was a horrendous period, and I felt extremely alone in it because I felt I had no one to talk to about it who would understand, who could relate, especially as I thought it was a flaw in myself, rather than being grateful that he was healthy and happy and could continue to be.”
When I posted a throwaway mention on my Instagram Stories about how trying my hormones had been since weaning, I was astonished by the tidal wave of responses I received. All these women, shared their understanding and sympathy. It was enormously helpful: I wasn’t broken, I was undergoing yet another unspoken transformation of matrescence—one that, all too often, you can only know by going through.
Still, we can do more to make this change less punishingly silent. For Professor Brown, it’s a problem that can be tackled at several levels—that of undertaking more research into what women actually experience, of improving support at a healthcare level, and, more broadly, at a societal one. “We’re really not very good at supporting mothers through changes in their children’s lives. It’s time we really valued how much our mothers do,” she says. One practical change that would help enormously, she suggests, would be to accommodate breastfeeding and weaning in the workplace support offered to women upon returning to work.
The women I spoke to had different ways of coping. One enjoyed her first night away from her daughter in over a year, and took a moment to journal about her feelings, acknowledging the new space she had carved out for herself. Fiona practiced simple wellness exercises, such as getting outside and taking some fresh air. Michelle, whose work as a breastfeeding peer supporter still couldn’t prepare her for the “emotional discomfort” she experienced when she stopped feeding her son, has a plan in place for when she eventually stops feeding her daughter: “Nourishing foods, any rest I can get, writing, painting, running. One thing that really helped me has been taking selfies of myself and my children while they feed. It feels slightly ridiculous at the time of taking them but documenting this act feels incredibly important. I revel in them now and have hundreds to look back on. I want my babies to know what a precious experience feeding them with my body has been, how it brought me home, an exhale for us both.” Recently I’ve been wondering if there are any photos of me feeding; I’m surprised at my sadness upon realising I can only think of a couple.
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