This is not going to be very coherent

It is time. To stop breastfeeding.

I don't really want to. We've worked so hard and it seems to be going well enough, and baby J isn't eating solids with much enthusiasm yet.

But he also isn't sleeping through the night, due to colds. And it is starting to take a serious toll on me. So here I am, a second time, ready to start anti-depressants.

I wish I wasn't here. I wish I were somewhere else. With him. With me.

But I can't sleep very well anymore, even when he is napping. My brain is just too alert. And I'm in tears a lot - once a day. That is a lot.

So even though many of those tears are about stopping breastfeeding him, the fear of being past my childbearing years, the fear of lost connection and not being able to soothe him as I have for the last 8 months, I need to do something to feel better again. To not see every day as so much of a struggle. To get a bit of levity back.

I've looked at each breastfeeding session over the last few weeks as possibly my last, so I've taken time to stop and notice and just be present. And I can tell you, that even having done that I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I noticed it or cherished it enough. It is a major milestone for me, for women who go through it, and it can feel so final, so sad, and I guess that is just the way it is.

I don't want to find any solutions for not having to stop, though, because I'm so very tired. Of all these work arounds to try to make things just a bit better, to hold on just a bit longer. And finding websites about drugs I could take and continue feeding just make me more overwhelmed and don't actually provide comfort. I need some chemical help.

So there we go. A new phase of life coming. And, as a friend very wisely pointed out to me, having gone through a similar stage, while it is the end of physical fertility for me, creativity is also fertility, and there is still a lot of that ahead. It doesn't feel like a great trade right now, at this moment, but I think on the other side of starting anti-depressants, it probably will.

Time to leap, and hope the net appears.