So I was reading a thing about weaning your baby and this lady said she really wanted her breasts back and her husband really wanted them back. I have nursed every day for the past 5 years and 3 months except for a few weeks during one pregnancy. I do not like nursing during pregnancy very much. But we did it and it was ok and it made everyone happier in the end. I like breasts though. They're great. And my nurslings like my breasts. They both get incredibly excited when they see them. My husband - I'm sure he'd say he likes them too, except that the moment he hears the word "breasts" he probably stops thinking a little bit. (I don't know if he reads this so I can probably make fun of him all I want. If he gets mad I can show him the breasts right?)
I read another article, this time in Newsweek, about "mommy makeovers". You know, the plastic surgery we get after we have kids so we don't look like we had kids? I'm lazy so I'm not going to go get the magazine and quote but this lady said something great about how- hey! we're not 20 anymore and we had kids! What's so wrong with looking like that? Plenty I guess. And then someone ordered me a subscription to Glamour in my maiden name and it's being sent to my parents. They have implant ads, much like pharmaceutical ads. The back page of the add lists all the adverse reactions and such and I had no idea that they were so problematic. In the first 7 years or something there's around a 50% chance of needing them replaced. And it said in there that an augmentation is not a one time surgery, that you should expect to do it multiple times in your life. And doesn't it hurt? Because that would be the biggest turn off for me. I used to be not entirely happy with my body, mostly because of crap like that. We can doctor and photoshop everyone and then plaster it all over and say THIS is beautiful when nobody really looks like that. I just want everyone to feel beautiful. My friend Bonnie has a website called The Shape of a Mother that I just love. It's a service to women everywhere.
But back to my boobs. I am nursing a now 3 year old and a 5 month old. And I am wanting to be done with the 3 year old. I have never weaned a child before - I have fully believed in child lead weaning. Until now. Until I had this child that screams and kicks and hits and begs and cries to nurse. I do not want to be cruel. I don't want to take something from him that he obviously feels that he needs. But I want to be done with it. And it's so hard because my boobs are always there because of the baby.
Have you ever weaned a toddler? What did you do? (If any of these ideas could help him magically sleep in his own bed, I would love that too!)
3 comments:
It is SO hard when tandem nursing to wean the older one. I hated it. Hated. it. So much that I weaned L & A during pregnancies (A has been weaned about a month & a half now I guess). My suggestions (not saying they necessarily worked for me, I don't remember exactly what worked, aside from persistance) - cut nursing to in one place (only in the bed, only in one particular chair, etc). Stay out of the house so that place isn't available. ahahahahhahahahaha okay i'm not much help. Its so hard. to say. no. when there is a little one still nursing!!!!
my mom used logic with weaning the toddlers...she made it a part of being big (babies need to nurse, but when we get big, we dont' need it anymore etc). They would choose a day a couple of months out (usually 3rd birthday) and then slowly cut back on nursing while counting down to this day when the child would be so big that theydidnt' need nursing anymore... worked pretty peacefully.
In terms of the actual cutting back, She first cut out any nursing except going-to-sleep nursing...then it was only going-to-sleep-at-night (not for naps). Then it was only for 5 minutes...then for 1 minute...then until she counted to 20 or 10 or whatever. She still sang with them and cuddled with them, but just not nursing...
I think the biggest help is to make it part of getting big--so it's a positive thing, rather than a negative thing (giving up something). I haven't been down that road yet, but I hope it helps!
HI, Sara. I found your blog through a comment you made on Magically Mama.
Anyway, I loved this post. It's so real and down to earth.
The longest I breastfed was 3 years. I nursed through an entire pregnancy (kind of difficult, kind of okay) and then thought it would be blissful to tandem nurse (NOT!). It was a disaster. So I ended up limiting the big kid to just nursing once a day at night. I made that our special time when I had no other distractions and could just cuddle him and talk to him.
Even so, that got to be just too much eventually. So I made a big deal about telling him that his last day was on his birthday (several weeks away). I would tell him that he could nurse now every night but when he was a big boy on his birthday, he wouldn't nurse any more.
The night of his birthday, I was really sad about it actually. And I wanted to really cuddle him and make that last nursing meaningful. But he took about three little sucks and was off to play with his siblings and couldn't be coaxed back to nurse at all.
Over the next week, he would ask to nurse at our regular evening times and I'd tell him that he already he had his birthday and he was done. It actually broke my heart. But he didn't seem to care all that much.
(The funny thing is that his baby brother self-weaned only a few months later at 14 months. Whatever.)
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