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Post bottle sleep coma. Not looking at my son with some slight resentment, no, not at all.

Alternately Titled: How to Get Over Yourself When Your Baby “Self-Weans” Before One / Goes On a Never-ending Nursing Strike / Develops a Bottle-over-boob Preference / Defies Everything the Experts Know About Babies and Does Something You Didn’t Know to Worry About.

  • Step 1: Doubt that your four-month-old is actually refusing to nurse.
  • Step 2: Offer a bottle so that said baby doesn’t starve.
  • Step 3: Try to nurse again and get rejected. Begin to worry.
  • Step 4: Repeat step 3 and 2, in that order, increasing worry exponentially with each occurrence.
  • Step 5: Cry.
  • Step 6: Blame yourself, and then your spouse, and then your baby, and then the bottle, and then your boobs and then yourself again. Because, it’s your fault. Obviously.
  • Step 7: Research and research and research with your frenemy, Google.
  • Step 8: Try all the tips your ‘research’ led you to try. Build frustration and tears each time a new ‘tip’ has no effect on your child’s persistent, angry refusal of your sweet, milky boobs.
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  • Step 9: Suck it up. Tell yourself it’s not a big deal, and that you’re lucky you got even four months of breastfeeding.  Many women don’t even get that.
  • Step 10: Get angry and acknowledge that, yes, you’ve been lucky it’s been so easy but F WORD this needs to end NOW.
  • Step 11: Rationalize. Well, you can still pump breastmilk.
  • Step 12: Itemize all the reasons exclusively pumping will suck: 1 – it’s not convenient;  2 – it can lead to reduced supply and a need to supplement; 3 – it doesn’t give you all the selfish feels of closeness and bonding. Tell these reasons to anyone who will listen.
  • Step 13: Suck it up. Life goes on. Your kid is growing, healthy, happy. This is NOT a big deal.
  • Step 14: Ask everyone you know who nursed what they would do if their kid stopped nursing. Ignore the women who tell you their nursing strike turned into a kid who weaned. Tell yourself that won’t happen to you.
  • Step 15: Feel disconnected from your baby. Mourn the loss of nursing.
  • Step 16: Establish a new normal of pumping around the time your kid eats.
  • Step 17: Cry. Laugh.
  • Step 18: Realize it’s not all that terrible to have very portable food for your kid. Itemize the reasons: 1 – you now know exactly how much your kid eats every day — no more doubting is he hungry?!; 2 – all those times you wish you could ‘detach your boob and insert in his mouth when he was crying uncontrollably in the car/in public/whenever’ is now a reality; 3 – everybody gets to feel the joy of your squirmy, active baby melts into their arms as he eats five times a day; 4 – realize you get to kiss his head, his cheeks, his nose while he eats; feel his little fingers curl around yours on the bottle; 5 – note that washing so many bottles is somewhat calming at the end of the day.
  • Step 19: Write about it and realize, hey, you’re actually ok with this. You know, because you have to be. Prepare a second, slightly more helpful post on breast refusal to be shared soon. Sigh heavily, for good measure.

**Note: Steps 1 – 16 occur over the course of 3 days. Steps 17 – 19 over the course of 3 weeks.

Where have you found humor to be the best medicine when parenting didn’t go as you imagined it would?