Breastfeeding: The Endgame.

Check it out: My little baby bird is nine months old. Yep. She's been out as long as she was in.

George is is robust and thriving. Her mother, not so much. I'm still trying to get my back under control. My friend Jen (also back-troubled and freshly-babied)  and I are concocting plans to share a personal trainer and I'm back at yoga, but the pain, she is grinding at the heart of me.

My osteo told me last week that he thinks that when I finish breastfeeding, ligament-softening hormones won't play a role in the instability of my spine anymore. George, my darling; my little friend, I decided, the tits-out section of this party is over.

I bought a big old tub of formula and made her up a bottle, and she threw it back like a pro. It was great. I decided that I would wean her slowly, like I had her siblings, but at the next feed, George gave my nipple a sudden sharp bite with her two little fangs. Hi-ya!

I might have jumped a little. Maybe even invoked the name of (as my five-year-old niece would have it) Jesus Price. But this mama's been bit before, so I didn't take too much notice. My friend Michelle would call it 'niplash'. You just grit your teeth and hope they don't make a habit of it.

Except that she did it at the start of the next feed too, and the next, and the next. Bit, screamed, wailed, refused to feed.

I think she's doing that thing where you're getting fired and so you shout 'You can't fire me! I QUIT!'

It's all over. I wept a few tears as I fed her a bottle, put the call out to my beloved Neighbourhood Ladies for a breast pump to sort out the mechanics of the change-over, and resigned myself to a sudden, shocking, kind of horrible end to what has been an absolutely trouble-free and lovely breastfeeding relationship.

Still. Here's hoping that  it heralds the start of a new era of health and strength for me.

(And for you too, my friends of the interweb.)