by Roxanne Solangi-Bresloff
Every night my one year old son and I do
the breastfeeding dance until he settles down to sleep. The dance
begins after he has had his bath, and I lay him down on our bed in the
dimly lit bedroom.
Before I can climb in next to him he is wiggling and squealing
and looking for his Mommy's breast. I lay down on my side and lift up
my shirt and he latches on, which is the first step in our dance.
The next step used to be gentle, but since he is hitting all his
physical milestones all at once, our dance has become more frenzied of
late. He tries to flip onto his stomach while latched, and pull his
little legs underneath him to try and sit up. But the breast will not
follow, so he lies on his stomach, one arm over the breast and nurses
in this position a while as I stroke his back and hum him a
lullaby.
When he signals the next phase of the dance by de-latching and rolling
onto his back, I pick him up and transfer him to the breast on the
other side. Up he goes in the air and over, and then he repeats the
first steps of the dance again. Then he de-latches for his solo
performance. He alternately crawls like an inch worm or rolls, pausing
occasionally to push into a sitting position, smiling, his hands
bouncing in his lap, and saying, "Ahh, ahh,ahh,ahh," happily.
Then he will notice his dance partner, the breast, left alone and
forgotten and launch himself towards it. He lodges his head under my
arm, or tries to nurse by half lying on top of me, since I have been
lying on my back to watch him. I end this part of the dance after a
few minutes, because it is not very comfortable, He rolls away and
flops down on his side or stomach or back, which signals that we are
coming to the end of our dance.
I rub his back and sing to him, and he will drift off to sleep But
sometimes he returns for a last slow, tender dance before he finally
closes those shiny, thick lashed eyes, and then I kiss him one last
time before tucking him in for the night.
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