For the first time in (almost exactly) nine years, I am not pregnant or nursing.

Chloe weaned over our vacation.

I always figured I'd find it bittersweet when my last "baby" weaned. I thought it would be an emotional event... afterall, it had been emotional for me when her sisters had weaned. However, I'm finding that it is not. Not in any way. It just is. I'm not doing a happy dance about it, and I'm not sad about it. I don't feel that my body is somehow "my own" again, as I have heard other women have felt. But then I never felt that it wasn't mine, just that there were added physical demands on it - but what it could do was awesome.

I'm thinking that I am feeling this way in part because Chloe will ALWAYS be my "baby". She didn't wean with the impending birth of another sibling, as her sisters did. My thought is that I became emotional when the other's weaned because it was symbolic of their being "displaced" as the baby - and that they were acknowledging it (metaphorically, of course) by no longer needing to be at the breast, and therefore I felt it acutely (hormonally?). This time, it's just another stage in Chloe's growth and development, and not at all symbolic of an outside force acting upon her.

"Go on, grow up" (Mike Wazowski, Monster's Inc)