Weaning

For almost a year now, I have been attempting to wean my daughter from the bottle. Unfortunately, I haven't been successful at it. For friends in North America, your question would be why just now? For those here in the Philippines, you ask, why so early? I've tried taking away a bottle at a time,initially the mid-morning bottle, thinking that if she is able to take one cup at a time, I'd eventually have her progress to taking all her milk in a cup. But my daughter is just too smart for that, she figured that if she just waited a while longer, she would be able to get the bottle later on in the day. She would take all other fluids in a cup: juice, water, anything BUT her milk. Believe me, I own almost every cup there is, with soft spouts, hard spouts, silicone straws, plastic straws, tumblers with cartoon characters, from the designer state-of -the-art for babies, to the cheapo ones you get at the grocery. But I am not winning in this game.

Two days ago, I decided to hold my ground and did cold turkey. No more bottles. At all. She either takes the cup or nothing. Needless to say, she's been throwing tantrums all around and is refusing milk altogether. So far, it's been a trial to everyone at home, having her cry at the top of her lungs and pushing away the cup all the time. I try to do tough love, but deep inside, I'm having my doubts if I'm doing the right thing by "starving" her, and I get scared that I might turn her off milk forever, or that I succeed in dehydrating her. Sigh, I cross my fingers that she decides to drink milk again. In a cup.

Which leads me to thinking: isn't the process of weaning the same as when we make our defining choices in life, when we decide to let go of the familiar to reach for something new and scary? We all have our security blankets, but there are moments when we have to do things we do not like in order to move forward. Change jobs, move to another place in the sun, get married, get out of being married, make career choices that may or may not bring us what we want. For some, it is as easy as doing it a bottle at a time, slowly moving towards a goal imperceptibly. But for others, cold turkey is the game when you just have to go for bust and let go entirely. After all, you can only move to a new horizon when you lose sight of the shore.

I believe there come times in our lives when we just have to go for broke and severe the ropes to be able to sail to new vistas and reach distant goals. Or in this case, throw away the bottle and reach for the cup.