Ask Judy: Has My Baby Weaned?

Dear Judy. So as you know we recently moved. The move allowed us to put our two older boys in the same room, giving the baby his own room. So the other night we set his crib up and let him sleep there. He ended up sleeping from 9:30 pm to 9 am! Needless to say I was SORE in the morning.

I Thought no big deal – it was his first night and I’m sure tonight would be different. Sure enough he ended up passing out in his play pen at 8:30 pm and my husband just moved him into his crib and he slept all night. For most this would be wonderful news. But he has been falling asleep without nursing. So that’s 3 nights in a row he has not nursed. I think he may have weaned!

I do NOT want him weaned. I really want to nurse him till he is two and I still have until February until that happens. I just want to cry! This is our last baby and my last chance at that bond

This can be so difficult on a mom, but don’t give up yet. It is very rare for a baby to wean that suddenly. He is probably reacting to his new environment and all of the new exciting things. He will want to nurse again! Is the nighttime session the only time that he nurses? If you aren’t ready for him to stop, then offer the breast after dinner – a little earlier than bedtime. That will give him the ability to still fall asleep at bedtime without nursing, but still give you the ability to continue your bond with him.

Be forewarned, though – if you re-initiate breastfeeding, he may not want to give it up when he turns two and then you may end up going much longer! I also thought we would go until two, then I thought age three was my max. My son will be four next week and I think we are finally done.

Keep in mind too, that even when weaning does come, you will still have many ways to bond with your baby. He is lucky to have nursed so long – and if this does end up being his time to wean, your bond with him will continue through all of the other ways in which you nurture him.

HUGS

Learning To Wean Book – Five Winners Chosen

Thank you to everyone who entered the Learning To Wean Book Contest. It is wonderful to see so many toddlers nursing!! We have just chosen the five lucky winners and they are:

• Strawberry
• LaVonne
• Jennifer Hamitlon
• Danika
• Melodie

Congrats to all of the winners!! Many of our winners have blogs of their own, please click on their name above to visit their blogs. And they all shared their breastfeeding story with us too! To see the stories, please visit the original review and contest post. For those of you who weren’t lucky enough to win, you can purchase the book Learning To Wean at the authors website.

Product Review: Learning To Wean

I don’t normally do product reviews on this blog, but when Bea Lorimer approached me with her book “Learning To Wean” I was thrilled to review it!! It fits right in with where my son and I are in our nursing relationship and I thought it would be the ideal item for me to look at, try out and review. If you have been reading this blog, then you have probably seen my “Journey Through Breastfeeding“ post, which is all about my journey with my son and the methods of “gentle weaning” that I have used to encourage his “child led weaning.” For me personally, I really wanted to let my son lead the way with our nursing relationship, but there have been little things that I have done to “help” us along the way. You can read our whole story here.

Where we are now: My son is 3 years 10 months old. At this point we are nursing on average one time per week or a little less. There have been two times where I thought we had weaned (in April he went 10 days without even asking to nurse and just last week, it had been nearly a month since he had nursed). Both times, just as I thought we were done, he started asking again.

The Review: I received the book, Learning To Wean, from the author, Bea Lorimer, a few days ago. I immediately took it out and read it myself. I have since read it three times with my son.

What I like about this book: Learning To Wean is a very simple straight forward book. I like the fact that is has a gender neutral toddler as the main character. “Sam” can easily be Samuel or Samantha. I also like the fact that it helps your child address the emotions that they may be having by talking about sadness and feeling proud. It is an easy read and enjoyable for both mom and child. Another thing I really like is that the author includes a letter with each book. The letter gives you some other resources for weaning including a tip list and it talks about the book and how you can personalize it for your own situation. It is a very nice touch and shows that the author truly cares about your breastfeeding journey and wants to help you wean gently and with love.

Things I might like to change about this book: This is a wonderful book, and there is really only one change I would make if I had my choice. It was written by an author from New Zealand and uses the word “mum” throughout the book. When I read it to my son, I just substitute Mommy or Mom, but if I had the choice, I would rather have an “American English” version of the book that was available for those of us in the States to purchase.

My Recommendation: I think this is an adorable and very useful book for mothers with nursing toddlers who would like assistance in broaching the subject of weaning. My son is older and we have had several conversations about weaning already (as you can see my post on my breastfeeding journey). For us, I think this book would have been more helpful if we had it one or even two years ago. Right now we are at the stage where he often forgets about nursing, so reading this book makes him think about it more and ask more. But when he was two or even in his early threes, it would have been a very helpful way to start talking about the fact that he won’t nurse forever. I highly recommend this book for anyone who has a nursing toddler and would like to be able to discuss weaning with their child. Learning To Wean is a very gentle, easy way of talking about this very delicate subject with your nursing toddler.

Bea Lorimer is a mother to a 6 1/2 year old girl. Although her daughter has now weaned, it was a long and interesting process. She is also a La Leche League leader, an artist and this is the first book that she has written. She blogs about the weaning process at All About Weaning and her book can be viewed and purchased at the Learning To Wean website.

ENTER TO WIN!!

Bea has generously donated FIVE copies of her book to be given away to Mommy News & Views Readers. To be entered, please leave a comment sharing your nursing experience and the age of your baby. (this activity is required in order to be eligible to win)

Extra Entries:
You can get extra chances to win a copy of Learning To Wean by doing any or all of the following activities. Please leave a separate comment for each activity so that you will be entered to win. We will be using a random number generator to pick the winner, so be sure to enter a separate comment for each activity:

• Follow @MommyNews on Twitter – leave a comment here telling us that you are a follower. Tweet about the contest up to once per day to earn extra entries. Be sure to include a link to this post in your tweet and leave a comment for each one so that you will get your extra entries!
• Follow this blog – just sign up by clicking the NewsFeed button at the top right corner of our blog and sign up to receive our updates using your favorite reader or enter your email address to receive updates via email. Don’t forget to leave us a comment telling us that you did this.
• Become a Fan of A Mother’s Boutique on facebook. Come back here and leave us a comment letting us know that you signed up!

This contest ends at 5 PM on Monday, June 29th. Enter now and tell your friends to enter too!

Gentle Weaning – My Journey Through Breastfeeding

Weaning begins when your child starts to take something other than your breast milk as part of his diet. For most of us, that is around the six month mark. Weaning for some happens quickly, and for others lasts for a very long time. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that mothers breastfeed exclusively for 6 months and continue to breastfeed until at least 12 months. Breastfeeding may continue beyond this point for as long as it is mutually desired by both mother and child. The World Health Organization recommends breastfeeding for up to two years of age or beyond.

No matter when you decide to wean, do so with love, kindness and compassion and do so gradually.

When my son was born, I knew that I would breastfeed for at least a year. After a few months, I thought that I would breastfeed for two years. I was lucky in that I had many role models who had breastfed their babies for longer than 1 year. Eventually I thought I would like to let my son self-wean and I had heard so many stories of children that had self-weaned. I definitely thought that was for me.

Let me start at the beginning. My son was born via emergency c-section and had to be suctioned at birth amongst other complications. He had a lot of trouble latching on and we had to use a nipple shield to finally get him latched. My milk also took FOREVER to come in and my poor little son was dehydrated. After a very rocky first 2 weeks, my son was nursing like a champ! After 3 weeks, we were able to wean from the nipple shield and by 4 weeks he was a great nurser (nursed literally every hour during the day time hours) and a great sleeper (was sleeping 8 PM to 4 AM by the time he was 4-5 weeks old – NOTE: this amount of sleep for a baby this young is NOT typical – I was SUPER lucky). But like I said, my son literally nursed every hour for the first year of his life. Even when he was with his nanny, he would take the bottled breastmilk every 1-1.5 hours. He was a nibbler – didn’t like to drink a lot at once – just liked to drink all of the time! Since he nursed so often, I believe that I have literally nursed in public just about anywhere that it can possibly be done! (but that is another post all-together…)

At 12 months my son was still nursing 10-12 times per day. By 18 months, we were still breastfeeding in public and he was nursing 8-10 times per day. Right around this time, he was able to understand enough and have enough patience, that I could tell him “when we get home” or “not right now” when he asked to nurse and he was OK with that. It was also around this time (between 18 months and 2 years) that I discovered that my son had several breastfeeding “triggers.” These triggers were places or positions that made him want to nurse. For instance, we had a yellow chair in our living room that we always nursed in – from the time he was an infant I used that chair because it had a very firm, straight back and was comfy for sitting and nursing. I found that whenever I sat in that chair, even if my son wasn’t thinking about nursing, he would automatically want to nurse. I also found that if I avoided sitting in this chair, he didn’t ask to nurse quite as much. So I moved the chair off into a corner of the room and stopped sitting in it. Another set of triggers for my son were certain positions that I would hold him in. By this age, he mostly nursed sitting up in my lap. I found that if i picked him up to hold him and he was sitting up facing me, he would want to nurse. But if I picked him up and he was sitting up facing away from me, he wouldn’t ask to nurse. When he turned two, I also developed a “Don’t ask, don’t offer policy” – if he didn’t ask, I didn’t offer (unless he was having a meltdown, of course!).

It was also right about this same time that he was super interested in his toys and the world around him. So by avoiding triggers and encouraging his natural curiosity for the world, we went from nursing 8-10 times per day at 18 months to nursing only four times per day at age two. For a long time, we nursed first thing in the AM (he would come snuggle in bed with me, nurse and fall back to sleep – my favorite time of day!!), before his nap, after his nap and before bed at night.

Then Daddy was out of work for a few months and was around the house all day with us. Daddy started going up to get my son from his naps instead of me. This quickly eliminated the “after nap” nursing session and soon my son wasn’t even looking to nurse when he woke up from his naps – even if Daddy wasn’t home. Then, my favorite nursing session of all – the one that I thought would be last to go – the early AM one, was the next to go. It went all on it’s own. My son just started to wake up and ask to go downstairs to play. I would even ask him if he wanted to come “snuggle” in bed and he would say “no” he wanted to “go downstairs and play.” Occasionally he would come in bed, but most of the time, he just wanted to play. This was the part of “self-weaning” that surprised me the most -that he would just give up what seemed to be his and my most favorite nursing session – just like that! So by age 3, we were down to nursing only 1-2 times per day – before nap (if he took one) and before bed.

We have had several conversations about nursing. He knows that not all children his age nurse. He went to visit a friend with a child his age and a new baby and he came home to tell me “Jen nursed the baby, but not Leo.” He also asked questions like “Does Kenny nurse?” (his 13 year old cousin) or “Do firemen nurse?” So he knows that when he gets older he won’t need to nurse anymore. We had even discussed that when he was four, he might not need to nurse anymore – and he “kind of” agreed with that.

My son goes to preschool. One day he came home from school and said “Mommy, not all big boys nurse.” This seemed like a good opportunity to talk about weaning and how he was getting older, so I seized the opportunity. I told him that he was right, not all big boys nurse. I told him that he could nurse as long as he wanted to, but that someday he wouldn’t nurse anymore either. Then I told him that since he was such a big boy now, maybe he didn’t need to nurse EVERY day anymore. He agreed, and we decided that he would nurse every other day instead of every day. So for the next 3 months, we nursed every other day (unless he didn’t ask, which happened occassionally). Every day when I was putting him to bed, he would ask “Do we nurse today” and I would say “no” and he was fine. And on the days when I said “yes” he would ask “why?”

Then one day, we were playing with some of his animals, and he said that one of the animals was the “big brother” and that he was a big boy who didn’t need to nurse anymore. So again, I seized the moment. “That is great that this animal is such a big boy that he doesn’t nurse anymore. You are big boy too. Do you think that since you are such a big boy now, maybe we could nurse every third day instead of every other day?” And he agreed. The first week, he still asked every day “Do we nurse today?” and he nursed every third day. By the end of the second week, he was forgetting to ask and he was forgetting to nurse on the days that would have been his nursing days. He now routinely goes four to five days between nursing sessions. He is now 3 years, 8 months old. This is where we are today. It is a lovely journey from such a small baby to such a big boy! It makes me happy and sad to think that our nursing relationship will soon be over. There was a time when I thought he would never wean on his own and now there are times when I wonder if he will ask again or not.

What is your breastfeeding story? Did your child self-wean or did you encourage weaning? I like to think that I have done a mixture of both – self-weaning with encouragement. Please leave a comment and tell us about your “Journey Through Breastfeeding.”