risk tolerances
So even though he's almost 2 and I'm almost 8 months pregnant, I'm still nursing Harvey twice a day now. I'd like to say it stems from my hippy ideals of child-led weaning, maintaining the nurturing relationship, blah blah blah. But no; it's laziness. Nursing puts him to sleep... most of the time. And I want him to sleep... all of the time.
At this point in his life nursing has about an 80% put-down success rate. 8 times out of 10 Harvey will fall asleep at the teat, for a nice neat put down time of 10-15 minutes. If the milk runs out before he gets tired, add 20-30 minutes of singing. A dry put-down can take 40 minutes to never.
And therein lies the ultimate fear: today might be a day when he doesn't nap at all.
That's the fear that seems to be keeping me in nursing bras infinitely. I'd love to have a fully weaned toddler at this point, to give my boobs a break and erect a tiny facade of personal space. But an hour of singing in the middle of the day when I'm already exhausted, when the back of my mind is painted with a nightmare vision of a stressful put-down stretching into a drawn-out battle of wills which ends in an ever-more exhausted mama giving up all hope of rest and heading downstairs to make lunch, wakeful Harvey in tow... the thought of 12 straight hours no break of holding up my end of a constant conversation the other half of which is "This one day? Harvey this one day?" makes my brain drain out my ears, makes me say yes, nursing, anything to give you a better chance of sleeping.
It is a losing battle that I am fighting. I know my days of nursing him to sleep are numbered, that it gets less effective as I get closer to my due date, that he's getting older and wiser, and that some days he might just not nap at all. I tell myself that when the second one comes along they may never sleep concurrently. That I'll need to find other tiny moments of rest during the day. For some reason, these thoughts don't seem helpful.