So the boy’s second birthday was nearly a month ago now. I always thought I’d breastfeed him for around two years, which puts us right about now. So we’ve started the weaning process. Kinda.
We actually started down this path about six weeks ago when I finally called a stop to all the night feeding. It was at the point where he was waking four or more times a night and he’d be calling “want boobie” before I even got to the door.
For the longest time I just went with it, because he only ever wanted to nurse for a minute or two then he just went back to bed with no complaint. But the service calls were getting more and more frequent and eventually something had to change.
What followed was a long week of me getting up several times a night, holding an inconsolable boy and repeating “no boobies. you can have some water”. Each time he’d eventually cave in and have a sip of water before going back to bed. Now he rarely wakes, but if he does, he always asks for water.
Really, night weaning was the easy bit. During the day it’s so much harder to say no. He’ll be clambering on me when I am trying to work or trying to talk on the phone and it’s easier to give in than to try to put up with the whining and clawing.
But as of yesterday, I am making a determined effort to limit the daytime breastfeeding. My plan is to nurse only when he wakes in the morning, before his day sleep and before bed for the night. I’ve already broken my own rule once.
I wouldn’t say it’s going fabulously. He does get pretty upset if I refuse him. Distraction and redirection work some of the time but he often remembers a few minutes later and starts to cry again. I’m trying to keep reminding him that we’re only breastfeeding when he wakes up and before he sleeps now, and I think he understands to a point, but he doesn’t like it.
I feel a bit funny about weaning. To some extent I am pretty eager to be done with breastfeeding. Because a lot of the time, it’s a royal pain these days. He can’t sit still, he has to change sides every few minutes and he thinks there’s a self-serve buffet in my shirt.
But at the same time, I feel pretty sad – even though I’m probably at least a few months from being totally done.
In truth, I’d probably be happy to retain the pre-bed nursing session indefinitely were it not for our wedding plans. For various reasons, I want to wean fully before then, but if that wasn’t on the horizon then I could imagine continuing for another year.
As it is, I am planning on a fairly slow and hopefully reasonably gentle weaning process. Once I’ve managed to cut out the on-demand feeding I’ll probably give it another month before I do anything else. Then I might start to think about dropping the pre-day sleep feed. It will be at least another month after that before I look at dropping the morning or bedtime feed. The wedding is still six months away so there’s no great rush.
I think when it comes to say goodbye to that last session, we’ll both be pretty sad.
