When my son was 18-months-old, which was almost a year ago, I did the dirty "W" word. I *gasp* weaned him!
I had been a supporter of breastfeeding for as long as I can remember. I came from a "pro-breastfeeding" family and a long line of breastfeeders. But over the past year or so, as I was using social media to find more knowledge and support, I was slowly becoming a lactivist. (Read
this blog from "The Leaky Boob" for a look at how this can happen suddenly and unexpectedly, LOL. Yep, this is pretty much exactly how it happened for me too!) T was my second nursling. His sister, who is 6 years older, was weaned between 18 and 20 months, I don't remember exactly. I thought that I was doing the right thing. I knew that the AAP recommends breastfeeding for at least the first year. Also, the people I knew who breastfed had mostly weaned their nurslings around 12 months or earlier (earlier was most often the case). So I thought I had gone above and beyond and that was more than enough. Not that I was necessarily interested in weaning, and my nurslings hadn't necessarily shown signs that they were ready to wean, I just thought that that's what you were supposed to do. Like potty training, or weaning off a bottle or pacifier. Weaning is part of being a "big kid", right?
When I weaned my daughter, who is 8 now, she was only nursing about twice a day or so. Pretty much only at nap time and bedtime. I don't remember it being particularly difficult on either of us. I replaced her "nigh-night booby" with a "nigh-night sippy" and that was that. I do remember that it HURT when my milk dried up. About 3 or 4 months later, we went to visit my parents in San Diego. We stayed for a week and got all off schedule as far as naps and everything goes. As a result, when we were getting settled into the flight home (which is only like 45 minutes since we live in Phoenix), she was tired and very cranky! Which had me frazzled and panicky. "Calm down, we are on a plane," pretty much sums up what I remember feeling. But, she just kept getting fussier. So, I whipped out my breast and nursed her. She was in her car-seat so I had to get myself into that awkward squished position to be able to reach her, and also I knew that I had no milk so I was feeling extra awkward. Here I was nursing my 23 month old in public! (I didn't know at the time that toddler-nursing was totally normal.) Thankfully she fell asleep almost immediately, relieving my feelings of panic and self-consciousness, not to mention my awkward squished body-positioning. It was sweet that I was able to still give her the comfort she needed at the time she needed it even though I didn't have any milk. I find it odd that I don't remember our last "real" nursing session, only this one.
Weaning my son seemed harder. He was still nursing multiple times per day, the bulk of which were in the morning or before nap-time and bed-time. But if I sat down, here he would come to get some "boo." One day last spring I was out of the house all day, including at nap-time and bed-time. So, I decided the next day would be a good day to wean, since he hadn't been nursed for 1 whole day already. I remember not being able to sit down for the whole day, so he wouldn't come running over for "boo". I had to keep myself really busy, and keep my son distracted as much as possible. He didn't cry or whine about it, but he would still ask for it, which I thought I would just have to deal with and try to take his mind off the subject. I replaced his "nigh-night boo" with a "nigh-night sippy" and things went fairly well. But he was pretty attached to his "boo". He would put his hand in my shirt anytime he was feeling shy or scared, he would nuzzle with his head in my shirt when he was tired. I never discouraged these actions because it seemed like I should let him do what still made him feel like he was being comforted at my breast. I began to wonder if I made the wrong decision.
About this time, I had learned that the WHO actually recommends breastfeeding for at least 2 years, and longer if desired by both mother and child. Hmm, I had never heard this before. This was something that was normal and OK? This was something that some moms did? As I fell deeper into the world of lactivism and educated myself more and more, I heard about
"child lead weaning" or "self-weaning". Well, I thought it was cool and interesting, but it was still fairly foreign to me. The big seller for me was reading
A Natural Age of Weaning. So, nursing past infancy was normal! What an AHA moment!
I also learned that
nursing a toddler can really help a toddler deal with tantrums and
boy toddlers can often need extra help dealing with negative emotions. As my son was about to turn 2, I had just started nannying for the little boy who lives across the street from us who was about 18 months old, and there were a lot of times during the day when my son would become overly emotional. So breastfeeding as a way of calming down a toddler during their times of distress seemed like a natural no-brainer kind of idea! Like, DUH, I totally should have thought of that before! But, I didn't really know how to make that work for me, since he had already been weaned for nearly 6 months at this point.
{Let me take a moment here to point out that my daughter handled weaning much differently than my son did. My daughter had a pretty decent sized vocabulary at 15 months and could communicate well by the time I weaned her. She could let me know what she wanted, what she needed, and she was starting to come to terms with expressing her emotions. Sure she had her share of tantrums and melt-downs, but not like my son. My little guy didn't start communicating well until recently and he has more trouble controlling and dealing with his emotions. Most days I still get "He is such a happy boy!" from everyone he comes into contact with, which I have gotten his whole life, but some days he throws epic melt-down tantrums in the middle of the grocery store! But tantrums aside, he just really seems to "need" me more than she did at this age. It's funny to me how much my 2 babies can be so different. So, I learned how their personalities effect their response to weaning and also their readiness to wean.}
Back to my original train of thought... So, from then on, when my son would get overwhelmed and overly emotional, instead of just letting him cuddle into my chest with my shirt on, I would lift my shirt like I was going to nurse him and let him cuddle into my chest there. He was content with this for awhile, sometime he wouldn't try to actually "nurse", I honestly thought he had forgotten how, and sometimes he would try to suckle. I tried to help him relearn, I would say "Open wide and get a good latch. Say Ahhh." And he would do it. The week of New Year's, he even said "good latch." That cracked me up!
My son has always been a "quick" nurser. Where my daughter could sit and nurse for half an hour to 45 minutes, my son was always done after about 10 minutes or so, even as an infant. There were times when he would let himself relax all the way and fall asleep on the breast, but he stopped doing that around 7 months old when he started getting really active. (That's not counting our co-sleeping nursing sessions when I would bring him into our bed around 5 am and he would go immediately back to sleep but stay on the breast the whole time until we were up for the morning.) When he very first started "re-nursing" (hey, if I'm using the word "un-wean", then I guess "re-nurse" makes sense too, LOL) he would only spend like 1 to 2 minutes at each breast, but I think that had more to do with the fact that he wasn't getting much as far as "milk" goes. I don't know whether I found it funny or completely annoying. He would climb up onto my lap, I would get a breast ready for him to nurse, he would suckle for only about a minute and then demand the other one and suckle for another minute, then get down. Now that I have my milk supply back, he nurses for as long as he feels like it. Occasionally he will let himself nurse to sleep again. And sometimes, if he wakes up early and I go get him and bring him back into my bed, he will even nurse while he sleeps.
Let's talk for a minute about the process of getting my milk to come back. After nursing 2 babies for a total of over 3 years, my breasts are pretty well-trained. So, when I decided to try to "un-wean" my son, I figured I might need to help jump-start my milk supply a little bit. I started drinking Mother's Milk tea. I was drinking about 3 or 4 cups a day for a couple of weeks. Also, I had to remind myself that I was nursing again, so I had to make sure I was eating right and drinking enough water too. (Funny how you can forget to take care of yourself when you don't *have* to.) It took about 2 to 3 weeks before I really noticed that I had an actual milk supply again. Now, I have more than enough for him, but I don't feel "full" like I used to and I can be away from him for LONG periods and not leak through my shirt or anything. But then I remember that after he turned 1 or so, when he was nursing less and eating more, my supply was pretty much like that anyway. It was like I had enough, but I didn't have a TON. So, I'm pretty sure that my current milk supply is about the same as a lot of mamas who are nursing toddlers that never took a 6 month long nursing hiatus.
All in all, I think it took about 3 to 4 weeks between relearning how to nurse and getting my milk back in.
I definitely did feel a little self-conscious about this decision at first. Especially over the holidays when he would ask for his "boo" in front of other people. I felt like they wouldn't understand why I had weaned him and then let him "un-wean" himself, like I was letting him "get away with something" or "manipulate me", and I also felt like they wouldn't understand why I would nurse a toddler. But, my husband has become more educated as I have become more educated and he is very supportive and understanding. So I decided to just go for it! Almost all my friends and family now know that we weaned for a little bit but that it didn't work for us, so we are now nursing again until he decides he is ready to wean himself.
As far as the self-consciousness of nursing a toddler goes, well, it was new territory to me since I hadn't done it before, but I was never self-conscious about nursing before, not even when nursing in public. So, it was just something I had to get over in my own mind. I thought: "I have an arsenal of educated comments to make if someone makes an ignorant comment to me. And I have a huge network of lactivists to rely on if my feelings get hurt and I need to rant a bit." But honestly, I nursed confidently for a combined total of over 3 years of my life and I can do this confidently too! I am committed to this choice as the right thing to do for my child, and I am educated about why it is the right choice for him. Also, this is just like nursing in general. Toddler nursing is a natural part of life that more people need to know about in order for it to be viewed as normal (again) in our society. And I am pleased to say that I have nursed my son in public dozens of times since his "un-weaning"! We went to the Renaissance Festival a few weeks ago and nursed frequently (he was tired that day, he spent most of the time nursing in his Moby wrap), and we were with a large group of friends. I have nursed in my mother-in-law's living room. I have even nursed in restaurants. No one has said anything remotely negative to me or given me any kind of side-ways glance. (Of course, I am usually too wrapped up in what I am doing to notice or care about what kinds of looks other people are or are not giving me.) My mother-in-law did say something to me like "are you still breastfeeding?!" and I said "yep, he's not ready to give it up yet." And that was the end of that. I really wanted to tell her everything I know about a natural age of weaning, but my answer seems to suffice for the time being so I will save that one for the next large family gathering if anyone says anything negative about it. Also, I have found that I have many "in-real-life" friends that are nursing toddlers and even preschoolers. Some of them I met through lactivist-y social media, and some of them I just knew randomly, but I have found that it occurs more often than I ever would have known or imagined before I was one of them.
I'm really glad that my son and I are continuing our nursing relationship and that I can continue to give him the comfort that he needs. I think comfort-nursing a toddler is something I never understood until recently and now I see why it is so important, and I am glad I have been given a second chance at being able to give that to my son.
Thanks for reading about my journey of "un-weaning" my son. I hope that I can offer some advice, encouragement, and support for any other mother that might be thinking that her little one would benefit from "un-weaning" too.
*In this blog I really focused on the emotional benefits of nursing a toddler, and the importance of comfort nursing. But that's not to say that there aren't very significant health benefits of toddler nursing as well. But, that is another story...
