Ekomom
I don't know if this will help but I can share my experience. When I got pg with DS, DD was 15 mo. Totally planned on nursing through pg and tandem nursing. What did not fit into my picture was feelings similar to what you described: a strong revulsion/aversion to DD nursing, or even touching bbs and belly. :0 Not expecting that. In fact now that you mentioned it, I had almost forgotten that it was as much that as that nursing triggered worse m/s during the first tri that made me wean her by 18 months. Not my intention going in at all! Thought I was a bad/non clw/non-attachment parenting mommy! I was very sad and had a lot of mixed feelings about it. Yet could not move past such strong feelings of discomfort to meet her needs. Heartbreaking for me. So at the time I also regretted (almost) being pg when DD was so young, thought I should have waited longer. Felt the sadness and regret but also relief about weaning for the rest of pregnancy. Tried a couple times to reintroduce the breast, only a couple months later but she had 'forgotten how to nurse'. Enter the birth of DS. After the first 3 months, I toyed more with ideas of unweaning DD and eventually tried it. It worked! She nursed again. It also worked like a charm to get her to sleep at night when she was having a hard time with sleep. But the workload on me increased, DH got lazy about helping me. Even when we talked about it- for so long he had been sleeping with/ attending to DD's needs at night so I could sleep at last during pg and then nurse the baby after he was born... So he wanted me to be nursing them both to sleep and sometimes this would take a couple hours to where I no longer had my "me time" that I had managed to forge just before bed anymore (that short window when the kids are sleeping but before DS woke for his first nighttime waking). It didn't help that DH was being far less help at night with DS than he had when DD was born. So pretty much I was doing all the night care with DS. Then he was the one who went to DD when she woke at night so that was help. But she only woke occasionally, where DS woke many times a night... suffice it to say I was tired, and sleep depped. Don't mean to complain.
The good news is that we were successful reintroducing the breast to DD. The other piece of it is that it only lasted a few months, again, maybe because I got resentful when DH wanted me to lose my only alone time and nurse them both to sleep every night. Some nights it didn't work, or she woke and needed to nurse again, etc. I am just being honest, so hope I don't seem too selfish... though maybe I was. A tired mommy should know her limits though, to function effectively and not be a grouchy mean mommy. And I saw the way it was going and didn't like how I acted and felt with that. So once again, she weaned, really not very clw, a second time, this time she was
32 months or so. That said, there were times after that, when she was ill for example, that she nursed periodically over the several months after that, but nothing regular. It has now been almost 3 months since her last nurse, and I believe we are done. DS is 13 months and still going strong.
I found your post apt because we are now ttc again, and though DS is almost the age DD was when I got pg with him, he is nursing a lot more than she did at that age. In fact, though we are doing baby led weaning, he hardly eats many solids. So he definitely still relies on nursies for nutrition. Makes me take a pause because I don't want to push DS to wean, or even cut down if m/s gets bad again. Given what you've experienced I should take a second look and maybe wait longer in our case. Funny how when ttc one can have such an amorphous idea of how things'll go but the reality can hit you in the face! Ah the milk brain strikes again. I even really did forget, until you described your situation, and the initial feelings of revulsion, how strong that can be. I know for me it was a factor in weaning DD before either of us wanted to. Given my DS dependency on milk, I may postpone getting pg a bit longer, to next year sometime. Because I thought for sure now that I know what it's like, that I could do tandem nursing next time; through sheer willpower could overcome the feelings I could not surmount last time. Perhaps I should take a second look.
Closing thoughts. I forgot to mention the most relevant piece, which is that another factor in reweaning DD after DS was born, was the feelings of resentment/aversion resurfacing. That definitely influenced me a second time, though I felt horrible about it, and was part of what led me to help her wean a second time. Despite my best intentions. You know what they say about good intentions... Well I did do my best, though to this day feel somewhat sad about the weaning process. It did not go at all as I hoped/expected. And for that, I still have some small regret. I just pray it did not damage DD in some way, starting and stopping to nurse like that. I do know that dD and I do not feel at all as close as we were pre-DS. But maybe some of that is because she is 3 now, and the natural development and growth away from total mommy dependence. I don't know. Or I could be justifying. It still makes me sad. I still entertain thoughts of possibly letting her try to nurse again. I just wouldn't want to do that unless we could do CLW for sure this time, and I have no guarantee of that. Especially if and when we conceive again. I really admire those moms who manage with 2 or more children to tandem. I once met a French woman at a LLL meeting whom I never forgot: she was nursing her 3 DS's: 5yr, 3yr, and 6mo. And made it all seem so easy.
Maybe, despite my principles, I am not disciplined enough to follow through when push comes to shove. If I tried to nurse 3, or even 2 again I am concerned about having the aversive feelings resurface, and lead to weaning a child before their natural time again. I hope that is not true, and wish to plan carefully around the new arrival so that everyone's needs are met (including mommy's!). And that no one is driven insane, but also no one weaned before his time.
Thank you for being so honest about your experiences with this. It helped me to read it and hope something I wrote may have helped you in some small way too.
I don't know if this will help but I can share my experience. When I got pg with DS, DD was 15 mo. Totally planned on nursing through pg and tandem nursing. What did not fit into my picture was feelings similar to what you described: a strong revulsion/aversion to DD nursing, or even touching bbs and belly. :0 Not expecting that. In fact now that you mentioned it, I had almost forgotten that it was as much that as that nursing triggered worse m/s during the first tri that made me wean her by 18 months. Not my intention going in at all! Thought I was a bad/non clw/non-attachment parenting mommy! I was very sad and had a lot of mixed feelings about it. Yet could not move past such strong feelings of discomfort to meet her needs. Heartbreaking for me. So at the time I also regretted (almost) being pg when DD was so young, thought I should have waited longer. Felt the sadness and regret but also relief about weaning for the rest of pregnancy. Tried a couple times to reintroduce the breast, only a couple months later but she had 'forgotten how to nurse'. Enter the birth of DS. After the first 3 months, I toyed more with ideas of unweaning DD and eventually tried it. It worked! She nursed again. It also worked like a charm to get her to sleep at night when she was having a hard time with sleep. But the workload on me increased, DH got lazy about helping me. Even when we talked about it- for so long he had been sleeping with/ attending to DD's needs at night so I could sleep at last during pg and then nurse the baby after he was born... So he wanted me to be nursing them both to sleep and sometimes this would take a couple hours to where I no longer had my "me time" that I had managed to forge just before bed anymore (that short window when the kids are sleeping but before DS woke for his first nighttime waking). It didn't help that DH was being far less help at night with DS than he had when DD was born. So pretty much I was doing all the night care with DS. Then he was the one who went to DD when she woke at night so that was help. But she only woke occasionally, where DS woke many times a night... suffice it to say I was tired, and sleep depped. Don't mean to complain.
The good news is that we were successful reintroducing the breast to DD. The other piece of it is that it only lasted a few months, again, maybe because I got resentful when DH wanted me to lose my only alone time and nurse them both to sleep every night. Some nights it didn't work, or she woke and needed to nurse again, etc. I am just being honest, so hope I don't seem too selfish... though maybe I was. A tired mommy should know her limits though, to function effectively and not be a grouchy mean mommy. And I saw the way it was going and didn't like how I acted and felt with that. So once again, she weaned, really not very clw, a second time, this time she was
32 months or so. That said, there were times after that, when she was ill for example, that she nursed periodically over the several months after that, but nothing regular. It has now been almost 3 months since her last nurse, and I believe we are done. DS is 13 months and still going strong.
I found your post apt because we are now ttc again, and though DS is almost the age DD was when I got pg with him, he is nursing a lot more than she did at that age. In fact, though we are doing baby led weaning, he hardly eats many solids. So he definitely still relies on nursies for nutrition. Makes me take a pause because I don't want to push DS to wean, or even cut down if m/s gets bad again. Given what you've experienced I should take a second look and maybe wait longer in our case. Funny how when ttc one can have such an amorphous idea of how things'll go but the reality can hit you in the face! Ah the milk brain strikes again. I even really did forget, until you described your situation, and the initial feelings of revulsion, how strong that can be. I know for me it was a factor in weaning DD before either of us wanted to. Given my DS dependency on milk, I may postpone getting pg a bit longer, to next year sometime. Because I thought for sure now that I know what it's like, that I could do tandem nursing next time; through sheer willpower could overcome the feelings I could not surmount last time. Perhaps I should take a second look.
Closing thoughts. I forgot to mention the most relevant piece, which is that another factor in reweaning DD after DS was born, was the feelings of resentment/aversion resurfacing. That definitely influenced me a second time, though I felt horrible about it, and was part of what led me to help her wean a second time. Despite my best intentions. You know what they say about good intentions... Well I did do my best, though to this day feel somewhat sad about the weaning process. It did not go at all as I hoped/expected. And for that, I still have some small regret. I just pray it did not damage DD in some way, starting and stopping to nurse like that. I do know that dD and I do not feel at all as close as we were pre-DS. But maybe some of that is because she is 3 now, and the natural development and growth away from total mommy dependence. I don't know. Or I could be justifying. It still makes me sad. I still entertain thoughts of possibly letting her try to nurse again. I just wouldn't want to do that unless we could do CLW for sure this time, and I have no guarantee of that. Especially if and when we conceive again. I really admire those moms who manage with 2 or more children to tandem. I once met a French woman at a LLL meeting whom I never forgot: she was nursing her 3 DS's: 5yr, 3yr, and 6mo. And made it all seem so easy.
Maybe, despite my principles, I am not disciplined enough to follow through when push comes to shove. If I tried to nurse 3, or even 2 again I am concerned about having the aversive feelings resurface, and lead to weaning a child before their natural time again. I hope that is not true, and wish to plan carefully around the new arrival so that everyone's needs are met (including mommy's!). And that no one is driven insane, but also no one weaned before his time.
Thank you for being so honest about your experiences with this. It helped me to read it and hope something I wrote may have helped you in some small way too.
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