The Last One

Today I took my final Prenatal Vitamin. No, I am not pregnant. My doctors have all insisted that I keep taking them while I was still breastfeeding.

Today, both are done. I am done breastfeeding and I am done with the vitamins.

I am a little sad about both.

It is one week before Baby C turns one. My little Cinco de Mayo baby is going to be a year old. She is getting ready to start walking. She is fiercely independent. She no longer wants to be held, or snuggled or rocked. She wants to go. She doesn't care where, she just wants to go.

She had no interest in being breastfed any longer. She wants to feed herself.

The last time I breastfed my son was the night before his first birthday. And I felt a little sad, but this is different.

There will be no more babies. She is my last baby. I will never breastfeed again. I will never be pregnant again. Which, don't get me wrong, I am pretty happy about. Both of my pregnancies were miserable.

The best part, the part I will always yearn for, always miss, is feeling the baby move. That first little flutter, when you aren't quite sure. The bigger movements when you are sure what you are feeling, and just are stunned with the knowledge of what is going on. That delicious feeling that for now, for that time, they are all yours, that no one else can feel them the way you can, know them the way you do. The intimacy is so complete.

And that continues after they are born, after you are able to hold them. For a time, you are the only one that can comfort them, give them solace, feed them.


Slowly, very slowly, they start to grow, pull away, become separate from you. A tough pill to swallow.

So this morning, I swallowed the last vitamin.

I will let her go, as much as I can right now because that is the nature of this relationship. The rest of her life as my daughter will be her pulling away and me slowly letting her go.