Mud Puddles.

There’s a weird energy when you know you’re close to doing something for the last time. A nervous excitement and wonder about what that change is going to be like. What will it feel like? I’d think as I caught a foot to the face.

Placing the foot back across my lap, I’d say “Just a little more.”

They’d slam their eyes shut, and press into me even harder. Suckle as if they needed every last drop. I’d try to relax and remind myself I am their peace. It was hard to hear my inner monologue as my body screamed “fucking stop.”

I’ve been pregnant or nursing, sometimes both at the same time, since November 2019.

This the first time my feet have left the mud of these trenches without pregnancy promising me another round. (praise vasectomies)

Who am I when I am a mom who is not nursing?

This woman, I am excited to get to know.

In my daydreams, I become kinder and more patient. The stimulation of my house doesn’t feel like a war zone. My kids can cuddle me without my skin crawling and at night I don’t want to hide away in my room, with fantasies of grabbing the car keys and running away.

It didn’t always feel like this. I remember all the hours spent with their tiny bodies, our skin pressed together, I swear we shared breath. My body grew you inside, then outside me my body grew you. It’s the most spiritual experience I’ll ever have. Those quiet moments were just ours. The security, sacred.

I do it all, all over, no pause.

My precious babies.

My twins were days away from twenty months old when they stopped. My older two weaned somewhere close to the same age. I should be proud but there is still this nagging need to justify the stop.

It’s a puddle of water muddied with anger and sadness. But like a child in rain boots, I want to stomp in it with my kids and laugh.

Laughing at the absurdity, incredulous at my body’s ability. My reflection in the water, four pieces of me splashing recklessly, reminding me there’s still so much I will become.

So as an exclamation point, I threw out all the underwear that have held me through pregnancy, all the stretching then bleeding, and finally functioning as garment of a woman with small children who doesn’t sleep enough. The underwear and the bras with clips that my babies learned to unhook theirselves, they all went to the trash.

They belong to a different woman.

I feel proud of my tiger stripes and the flab that goes with them as I slip on my new bra with underwire. Lace still makes me feel sexy.

I am a full woman.

A mom no longer nursing.