In the past six years, I have spent a total of more than three-and-a-half years nursing one baby or another, on top of a year-and-a-half spent pregnant, and I am getting really, really ready to have my body back to myself for more than a few months at a stretch.

To that end, we’ve started giving Brynja the occasional bottle of välling (often translated as “gruel,” it’s a thin milk-cereal drink that most Swedish kids get as babies and toddlers). I was a little apprehensive last Friday when Olof gave her a bottle for the first time, but it went mostly okay and she drank 30ml with little trouble. The next day she gulped down 100ml in nothing flat, and since then she’s been drinking a bottle a day with nary a complaint. In fact, the last couple of times she’s seen me approaching with a bottle, she’s kicked her feet in happy anticipation and reached out to try to take it.

She’s pretty little yet, and I’m not planning to take any decisive steps toward weaning for a while, but even in just these few days I’ve enjoyed being able to take a break now and then. There is a part of me that feels a little guilty for introducing a bottle when I didn’t need to, but I’m not sure where that feeling comes from. I think it may have something to do with the fact that there are days when it seems that nursing is the only part of mothering that I’m doing one-hundred percent right, and giving the baby a bottle now seems a little like fixing what ain’t broke. It’s funny, though — I have no qualms whatsoever about feeding her a little bit of baby cereal or puréed fruit, and that’s essentially the same thing as giving her välling. I wonder why it feels different.