For the past eight months, it has been a joy to see the mother-baby relationship unfold. Of course, it has also been very stressful, so it was not a walk in the park. But even so, seeing nature’s work front and center was a privilege. From pregnancy to learning how to breastfeed to finally stopping breastfeeding, the mother-baby relationship is fascinating. 

The journey has not stopped or anything of the sort. They are still mother and daughter, and both of them, and me, continue to grow - the baby growing in every sense, including physically, and my wife and I growing in our roles. But once my wife stopped breastfeeding, it did feel like the end of an era. 

The mother-daughter journey, as I witnessed it, was a process in which they started together as one (pregnancy) to be separated into two distinct beings (birth), to go back to being almost one and the same (breastfeeding) to be again separated into two separate beings (weaning). It is as though they - we - went through two births. Both of them are different in their own way but also very similar.

During pregnancy, mother and daughter could not be anything but together. They were the same during every single minute of every single day of every single week. Physically, it could not be any other way. During the time my wife breastfed, however, they were also together and, to some extent, even the same. Physically, they could be separated, of course. And they regularly were once my wife went back to work. But they were still together in a very unique way.

My wife was thinking about our daughter and her feedings all the time. She confessed it to me after she had stopped breastfeeding, but I could also see it during those months. She eagerly waited until it was time for the baby to eat, and she would return relaxed and happy from feeding her. After she started weaning, my wife got some very strong blues. She researched it and confirmed that it was not only psychological effects that made breastfeeding special. It also has a very important biological component: breastfeeding releases oxytocin into the mother’s bloodstream.

In this way, weaning is like giving birth. Mother and baby go through a separation process that consolidates the baby as a completely independent being, including some very clear biological changes in the case of the mother. Our daughter was, and still is, of course, very dependent in lots of ways, so she still needs round-the-clock care. But it is not the same as it was before. It is complex to put into words, but it is a very tangible reality that, as the father, I can perceive very clearly. 

As an example, while breastfeeding, there were times when my daughter could not be consoled. There was nothing I could do or our nanny could do to calm her. She would only calm down when my wife breastfed her. The feeding could last only a few minutes, but it was the proximity that she needed, the feeling that her missing part was there again. The feeling of proximity, of closeness, was what both my wife and my daughter grew out of during weaning, which is why it is similar to a second birth.

This “second birth” is different, though, and it is so in a way that necessarily determines how the parents face it. Actual giving birth has a very clear and defined date and time. Paraphrasing a saying from where I am from, “Nobody gives birth on the eve.” But when it comes to weaning, there is nothing written in stone. You could breastfeed for two weeks, two months, or two years. It is completely up to you. As you can already imagine, this makes it hard to determine when to finally go through the second birth of stopping to breastfeed.

At that moment, when the mother decides to stop breastfeeding, two elements collude to make it a very hard decision. The first is the biological element, which consists of hormones, making it hard for the mother to stop. But there is also a very determinant psychological component, in which the mother has to accept that the baby is growing. The moment my wife decided to stop breastfeeding was also the moment in which she accepted that our daughter had grown, at least to the point where she no longer needed her mother as she did at the beginning of her life.

It might sound trivial, but it is huge. It was huge for my wife and also huge for me. It was huge because it was the first time you confronted that reality as a parent. It is not only that your baby will grow, but that she will grow to the point where she does not need you! Again, it might seem like this is taking it all out of proportion, but that is how we saw it when it finally happened to us. And it makes sense when you think about it. After the baby is born, your whole reality is upended. Everything becomes about the baby. Stopping breastfeeding was the first time that we realized that as time went by, even if it is measured in years, our daughter would eventually and very simply not need us at all (at least not for her survival).

How did we decide the time had come to stop breastfeeding? You might be asking yourself that question after reading the above. Well, life decided for us. When our daughter was seven months old we had to take a nine-day trip on which we could not take her. Up until that point, my wife had breastfed her, and it had gone perfectly well, but it was impossible to create a stash of the proportions needed to give her only breastmilk of those days. My wife also decided she did not want to pump during the trip. Seeing those two things, my wife said it was a good time to stop.

It turned out that the trip had the positive effect of drawing a line in the sand which would have been hard for my wife, for us, to draw. As mentioned above, there is no set date and time to stop breastfeeding. There is strong evidence, as probably many people out there could tell you, that the longer you breastfeed, the better. But while those studies are probably right, the decision, in my opinion, is not only about the concrete positive effects breastfeeding has. There are lots of other elements, some completely external to the baby, that also need to be factored into the decision.

In our case, the nine-day trip allowed us to step back and reconnect with the “outside” world. Because the baby, for a moment, became our entire world. And we are happy it happened that way, do not get me wrong. It helps a lot with making the new sink in. But once we got some space between us and our daughter, even if both my wife and I suffered every single one of those nine days, it also allowed us to put our newly founded paternity into the right perspective - our daughter is the most important thing in our world, but it is not our whole world. We would not have gotten that chance if it were not for the trip.

How did that change we went through thanks to the trip, manifest? In several ways, but I think that three of those are worth mentioning. The first is that our work days became less stressful. Before, my wife could hardly sit down to eat lunch because she needed to breastfeed. Once she had stopped, the load was distributed between her, the nanny, and me, as all three of us could bottle-feed the baby. The relief was general, and the air felt lighter in our home.

The second way this manifested is that we felt more relaxed going out with our daughter. It is still very tiresome because of all the logistics, but the nerves were almost all gone. We now feel like we wanted to include her in the world we belonged to before she came along. And the last one is that our daughter became more independent, as obvious as it might seem. This is especially clear when she is hungry, and she demands, without words yet, of course, but demands nonetheless that somebody give her her bottle. This is strikingly opposed to wanting to feel protected and soothed, as she did before when she got her sustenance via breastfeeding, which only her mother could do.

What my wife and I concluded is that yes, breastfeeding is very good, has great effects on the baby, and the longer you do it, the better. But it is also true that there is value in taking a step back, reconnecting with the world, your world, and then going back to taking care of the most important thing that ever happened to you, though not the only important thing that ever happened to you. So do not be afraid of arbitrary end dates to breastfeeding, like, for example, when your baby turns six months old. There is possible value in them. And most definitely know that life goes on for you, your wife, and your baby once breastfeeding ends.