Hi, I am right there with you! My daughter is 4 (1/22/06), and nursing hurts pretty much every time, so we've cut way back. I wanted to nurse her to 3, and we made it, then I figured I'd be comfortable nursing her until sometime while she's 4, and I was right. But we nurse a little in the morning (trying not to), and at night to sleep.
I know there's not much milk left, and she gets so whiny about not be able to nurse and it makes me a wee bit crazy. Oh, the whining! I have done a great job making sure she is strong and healthy, and I know its almost time to be done. I'd be fine with it all being over tomorrow at this point. It's been wonderful, but I am pretty much done.
My main problem is that she still night nurses and I've -always- put her to sleep with nursing, and I've been trying on my own to change that because I can't take it anymore. My husband works long hours and leaves at 5am every day (and used to work even more), so it's always been me to get her to sleep. It wakes us all up at night when I say No nursing till morning, because she gets whiny and cranky about it, and we talk about it during the day too, so she "gets it." We've only been working on nightweaning the past couple weeks or so, though. Maybe not even that long. I just realized I can't do this anymore.
We have no other family and I have no support other than my dh, and since he's always worked so much, I feel like I've just been trying to do this all myself since she was born. And I have! So, I know a lot of people have been able to nightwean and all that long before 4 years old, but nursing to sleep was always the easiest thing for me to do, so that's what I did, you know? I was too tired to try to do anything else, and now I know better.
It's totally worth it to get my dc to sleep in other ways!
Anyway, sorry this is all over the place, but I've been on here trying to find a post just like yours, so I can have someone to talk to about it, and to get some sort of help! It's just all been in my mind, and I only talk to my dd about it, heh. I want our nursing relationship to end soon (plus we're TTC now, and I don't want to go through any bad times at the end of "noo-noo toime"
).
I wish I knew what to do to get her to nightwean! It's working a little, I guess, but she gets all whiny/"don't touch me, I'm mad at you/crying because she's "sad", and I don't know what to say except it hurts me and we can snuggle instead, and relax. If she's tired enough I've noticed that she'll sometimes fall asleep eventually, but otherwise it's just kind of a mess and we are up-up at 4am, like today! I told her no noo-noo time until bedtime, and just for a minute while we read, and then we'll cuddle and fall asleep together. And no nursing in the night time because I need to sleep and it hurts. She's fine with talking about that during the day, but it's hard to "get the deed done", or whatever. I just want this to be quicker, and I don't know how long this will all go on... I feel like maybe I've just got to be absolutely firm about it- just nursing before bed, or something.
We need help.
Thanks so much for posting this, and for letting me get all these thoughts of mine out.. they needed it!
