We did it! And then some...

Tomorrow morning, Noelle will wake up, and the first part of breakfast will not be from Mama.

We've been getting closer and closer to being fully weaned. By her first birthday we were down to only the morning feed, and lunch and dinner were successfully transitioned to whole milk after her meals.

I've been looking forward to this change and dreading it all at the same time.  I think she is ready though, and I think I am ready too.

When I had Noelle, I decided to try to breastfeed for 6 months and re-evaluate once I hit that mark. It was really clear at 6 months that breastfeeding was one of her favorite things in the whole world, and there was no way we were ready to quit.  After that 6 month mark, breast feeding just got easier and easier. It was also free and extremely good for Noelle - so I decided to keep going until she was ready.

For months I got teary thinking about the end of this part of our bond, but I'm not on the verge of tears thinking about it now. She's ready as much as she can be, and it's just a little step of her growing up more and more. I've convinced myself that for each sweet baby thing she stops doing, she starts doing 2 new fun kid things that I love just as much.

Even so, I will never forget how special those moments have been with her. Her little "boob laugh" as we called it when she would get so excited to eat...the early days when she would fall into a complete milk coma halfway through eating...and her extremely fidgety final days where it was like she was trying to walk/crawl/eat all at the same time. She would even just stop eating from time to time and pause to give me a huge grin - just a little way of her saying "Thanks Mama!"

The good news is I still get those grins...when I go to get her out of her carseat or when I just take a minute to get her attention while she is playing with her toys. We are so blessed and fortunate to know and love this precious girl. 

I hope this transition is barely noticed by my girl!! We had an accidental trial day of it, when I woke up late for work on Monday. So I am hopeful that she will go on unaffected. 

After this process, we will work on dropping the bottles...for whatever reason she won't drink milk out of anything other than a bottle. If it's not one thing it's another, right? We'll get there...eventually!