Weaning
As of a couple of weeks ago, Adele is now officially weaned. We nursed for 22 months and I'm so thankful we had that time together, but now that she is weaned I am very happy and feeling good about our decision. I thought I would write here a little about what the process was like for us.
For me, deciding when to stop was the hardest part of it all. Adele has loved nursing since the minute she was born. With her personality I knew it was not likely that she would ever self-wean, at least not anytime in the next year or two. So as soon as I got pregnant I knew I would need to wean her sometime before the new baby arrived. (Side note: I know tandem nursing works great for some families but that just wasn't something I was interested in doing.)
So I found out I was pregnant at the end of August, beginning in September we had Leland start rocking Adele to sleep so she could get used to going to sleep without nursing. I would nurse her then hand her off to Leland awake and he would rock her to sleep. Luckily Adele has been night weaned since she was about 10 months old and started sleeping through the night, so we didn't have to worry about that. It wasn't a completely linear process, sometimes she wouldn't go to sleep for Leland so I'd end up nursing her to sleep.
Eventually she would be rocked to sleep by Leland most of the time. We had introduced a sippy cup of milk when she was 15 months old so she was used to having that at times. We started giving it to her before bed to replace the bedtime nursing session. At the end of October she was finally ok with being rocked to sleep by me for bed, though she still nursed to sleep for naps, so at that point I knew she was probably ready to be weaned completely. At the end of October I spent my first night away from her. I had hoped she would forget about nursing while I was gone and wean herself. Little did I know ha. She asked for "milk-milk" the first second she saw me when I got back.
Around this time my milk dried up due to pregnancy. It started to be painful to nurse and I started to dread it, so while before I had been putting it off, now I knew it was really time to just do it. She was down to just nursing first thing in the morning and before nap. I cut out the morning session by distracting her with shows. We did that for two days then I cut out the nap session on a weekend. I planned for Leland to rock her to sleep but she wanted me and let me rock her pretty easily with no nursing. So then she was officially weaned, sort of ha.
Right after that we went down to my parent's house for Thanksgiving. Adele caught a stomach bug and was completely inconsolable one night. She wouldn't go to sleep for anything and was begging for "milk milk" so I gave in and gave her some. She didn't end up going to sleep but it did calm her down. I ended up nursing her one other time while we were there for the same reason. This time she seemed to understand that the milk was gone and asked for her sippy cup of milk instead.
After we got home she has continued to ask for milk-milk multiple times a day. Usually just when she was actually hungry so she will be fine with just eating a snack instead. Even now, 3 weeks later she still asks! It is hard but she is stubborn so I think she just needs to keep testing me to make sure we're really done. She never cries for it or throws a fit so I think she is maybe ok with it ha. When she asks sometimes I do give her a real answer and tell her the milk is gone, or tell her that mama has owies and can't do it anymore. Though most the time I distract her with something else and she forgets about it.
I love breastfeeding, but the dreaded weaning is the worst part. I think there is a little bit of sadness and guilt there no matter how long your nurse for. Luckily pregnancy makes weaning much easier (I've been pregnant both times) the milk goes away on it's own so you don't have to worry about engorfement or mastitits, and you don't experience the same hormone drop you do when weaning when not pregnant.
Anyways, I am glad we made it through. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I know weaning a toddler is a big reason people wean their babies when they're younger. But I'm here to tell you it isn't really that bad and you can do it if you want to. (See my post about Nursing past one year). My advice would just be to take things slow, go easy on yourself, and to take a couple of months to wean if you're able to.
Now I am able to get a little break and look forward to breastfeeding my next little nursling in 4.5 months :)
Also for anyone who has weaned a toddler, how long did it take before they stopped asking to nurse?!
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