Re: Goodbye to eiy.
Brisbane
Dear Bandit,
I really enjoyed reading your letter about Bluey's first steps, and the photo you enclosed was just adorable!
It got me thinking about transitions, because Littles has just had a big one. Maybe the biggest this side of 12. She is weaned. Or, I should say, she and Beloved are weaned; it's always weird how people talk about it like a solo act! They both did it.
She's four, which is on the old side for mainstream society, but on the young for the give-birth-in-the-woods hippies that populate parenting forums (by the way, tell Indy's mum I said hi.) So Beloved is getting judged from both sides, and has already encountered some people online forcefully advising her to re-lactate at all costs!
This is a transition which differs from all the others, in two key respects. First of all, it sucks. When you move from nappies to potty, then potty to toilet, you gain independence. You get to use the toilet all by yourself, and suddenly there's such a thing as privacy. Yes, you gave something up, but you got something better in return. Similarly, moving out of Mummy and Daddy's bed into your own bed gives you a whole bed all to yourself. Give something up, get something better. With weaning there is an awesome thing that you give up... and then it's just gone. Nothing better on the other side. I said to Beloved, once Littles was asleep, "I'm stuffing her with chocolate tomorrow. Don't try and stop me." But that is an artificial compensation, rather than a direct consequential upside, and it can't last.
The other way in which it differs is in how little support there is for talking to kids about it. Breastfeeding is becoming, thankfully, less and less taboo, but the assumption that everyone will have weaned before they walk and talk is so deeply ingrained that talking to kids about weaning is just not seen as a thing. Where's the episode of Bing where Flop explains why there's no more mummy-milk? Where's the picture book called Molly's Mummy Won't Make Milk Anymore? Actually, that title needs more alliteration. Molly's Mummy's Mamaries' Moratorium on Making Milk. Nailed it!
Bandit, I wasn't prepared for how suddenly it would happen. Beloved has been doing "Don't offer, don't refuse" for a while now (and I'm sorry, but I really have trouble saying that without accidentally saying "Don't ask, don't tell), and that's been working well, Littles going for a feed once every two or three days. One day, that worked fine. The next, in the middle of a particularly difficult bedtime, she went for her greatest source of comfort, and it was just gone.
My mind provided me, complete with the smudgy-screen effect movies used to do with vaseline on the lens, a montage of reminiscence of watching and supporting my wife breastfeeding our little girl.
It was breastfeeding that first alerted me to the fact that I'm invisible. You're a dad, Bandit, so you must have noticed it too. We're invisible. Beloved has cerebral palsy and a visual impairment, the latter making it quite difficult to imagine space. An absolute tank of a woman rumbled in and started giving quite forcible breastfeeding instructions to Beloved, who, as well as having trouble imagining space at the best of times, was completely out her face because she'd just had a C-section. I tried to explain to the brute that Beloved had no way at all of understanding what she was saying, and was distressed by the way she was saying it, but I was completely ignored. See? Invisible! On a rare occasion on which a midwife actually acknowledged me, she told me it was not possible for me to cup-feed Littles without specialist training. What's that phrase you use? Ding-dongs?
Littles, like around 1/4 of the population, had a tongue-tie. That's the narrow strip of flesh connecting the bottom of the tongue to the bottom of the mouth. Until Littles was on the way, I thought everyone had one. They're no big deal most of the time, but can make breastfeeding trifficult.
But for reasons I can't quite figure out, midwives and other babycare professionals are notoriously bad at identifying them, and some are in complete denial of their existence. The NHS leaflet on tongue-tie has a picture of an extreme one. The sort of picture you'd expect to come with a request for £2 a month. I can totally understand parents looking at that and saying "My child doesn't have that!" Most tongue-ties aren't in that ballpark.
Anyway, after some discussion and debate, we decided to have Littles's tongue-tie cut, which made a large amount of difference. After it had been done, we were in a room with an infant feeding consultant. Littles's latch wasn't quite right, so I put a pillow under Beloved's elbow and adjusted Littles's position back about an inch, and that sorted it. The consultant said, "Dad's a pro", and I can't begin to tell you how much that small comment meant to me. All I had been doing to support Beloved was finally acknowledged by someone outside the family. After I'd got used to being invisible, it was just the best feeling in the world to be validated like that.
As the years went by, Littles developed her own made-up word for breastmilk: "eiy". That is the first attempt I've ever made at spelling it out. It's pronounced almost like "Aye", only more clipped. Also it's about halfway between the "I" sound in "Bicycle", and that in "Bisexual". This may not be a heplful distinction, because most accents don't differentiate between those sounds, but mine does.
It gradually expanded to mean breasts as well as breastmilk, as in "My mummy's got eiys!" (as she cheerfully announced to a friend in the park whilst lifting Beloved's top.
The night it went away was awful. When we explained to her that it was gone because she didn't need it anymore, she cried harder than she's cried for anything, wailing the word "Eiy!" over and over. I eventually got her to sleep by using the fabric sling, which I haven't used for a while. There was only just enough loose fabric to tie it at the back, and I had a real "Please, God, don't do this to me!" moment before I just barely got it in a knot.
When she was crying for lost eiy, I cried with her, and I felt weird about that. Like they were not quite my tears to cry. We dads have an odd relationship with breastfeeding, Bandit. We're involved, but never quite part of it. It's a unique bond between mother and child, which is exclusively theirs, and the outside of that can be a lonely place. Though, it can just as easily give us a welcome opportunity to steal some sleep!
Oh, Bandit, are we, the spectators, allowed to grieve?
Give my love to Chilli and the girls,
All the best,
Alastair.
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