Empty Spaces: the Uncluttering process from Breast to Solid food

On Sundays during the month of July, I don’t often find myself home cleaning house. But Since Brian was working on the rental unit, I was determined to get somewhere in terms of reorganizing our own apartment during naptime today, since we are busting at the seems with so-much-baby-stuff.

I started clearing out the cabinet where we keep bottles, throwing away the remaining breast milk storage bags when I realized that I could actually get rid of that horrid strap-on pillow I used for nursing as well, “My Breast Friend” they call it, the inner-tube we called it. That thing was taking up plenty of decent real estate next to my bed. I didn’t need it hanging around to remind me that breast feeding my two boys didn’t go exactly as planned, that in fact nursing is not necessarily the most natural thing in the world. Whatsmore the rented hospital grade double breastpump could be returned. I moved that out of the bedroom as well. It was already starting to look less cluttered. More serene, albeit empty.

I paused momentarily from my task prepared to beat myself up as I had each time I’ve seen someone nursing their child in the past few weeks since I ended Ethan’s morning feeding -- the last remaining meal at the breast between the twins.

I had allowed myself to look back on the first few months with some rather harsh self-criticism. Couldn't I have increased my milk production if I'd only tried a tiny bit harder? If I only gave up a tad more sleep, in order to pump? If I'd only attempted to get them off the middle-of-the-night formula feeding?

But my current chore kept me in check this time. I filled a shopping bag with the bottles we no longer used and the slow flow nipples, designed for newborns. We don’t have newborns any more, we have 6 moth olds. And the empty space left by removing the paraphenalia from when they first came home I replaced with sippy cups, small bowls in which I warm up their oatmeal, and big boy bottles. I'm grateful to be at this point: the twins are fun now, I am having fun. I laugh when they're placed too close together for a feeding, and Ethan tries to swipe the spoon away from Emmet's mouth. Greater enjoyment is afforded through greater confidence. I know they're getting enough nourishment now: physically, emotionally. And I know that the stuff I don't know isn't going to destory them. There is a huge relief in letting all this stuff go...out of the house in shopping bags, and out of my preoccupation. Emptying is a form of surrender that makes space for what is of greater use in the moment and in preparation for the moments to come.