Goodbye Mama

My daughter (now 19 months old) dismissed me tonight. And I felt loved.

We had done our usual routine: a few books in the living room while she ate crackers and sipped her bottle followed by brushing her teeth ... then said goodnight to da-da and sat down in her room to nurse, sing, and sleep (yes, we're still nursing/rocking to sleep ... which I know raises a lot of eyebrows -- risking the health of her teeth, for one, not to mention delaying or preventing the development of normal sleep habits ... but it's what we've settled into doing for now, for better or for worse -- clearly, though, I worry about it).

Anyway, as we sat down, I noted to her that I probably didn't have a lot of mama mo to give her (she had nursed quite thoroughly when she woke up from her nap only a few hours earlier and mama mo was still trying to catch up). Because I've been working on weaning, I bring a bottle in at bedtime and offer it to her partly to aid with the weaning process and partly to make sure she gets enough milk so that she doesn't repeatedly wake up. Sometimes she takes the bottle willingly; sometimes I sneak it in after she's drifted off but still attempting to nurse.

Tonight, when I had finished the third lullaby, she stopped nursing, looked me in the eye (OK, it was dark, so I'm exercising a little artistic license here), said in a cheery voice, "bye bye mama!" then "keeeeeess" while kissing me on the cheek and giving me a giant bear hug ... and then asked for "da-da." Then she did it all over again in case I wasn't getting the message (until tonight, by the way, I have never heard her say "kiss" but she's heard us say it thousands of times: you know, "kiss grandma goodbye," etc.). I asked if she would take the bottle from me, but, no, she wanted da-da, yet she kept hugging me as if to assure me of her love.

There was a time when her preference for my husband would have sent me into hysterics. I would have felt rejected. A failure. Unloved. Ready to quit working so that I could be with her every minute of every day to prove my worth, even if it meant living on government assistance.

But tonight was different. Rather than screaming for da-da as she has done from time to time in the past, my daughter expressed herself in an astoundingly emotionally eloquent way -- and I was able to hear her.

We're both growing up.