6weeks preg,so painful to nurse

[theresa1]

So I had not planned to make any changes to my 2year old child's frequent nursing when I became pregnant again. However it is so painful right now, especially in the middle of the night. Other than weaning/distracting any ideas? No one I talk to seems to have any advice for me. Thanks

[annettemarie]

As per the forum guidelines, I am going to move this out to Breastfeeding Beyond Infancy.

[rparker]

I made it through the first trimester by night weaning my daughter at 29 months. She accepted it much more easily than she had previous attempts when I wasn't pregnant. I just "un-night weaned" her at 22 weeks because nursing is easier now and her daytime nursing sessions had decreased. She still mostly chooses to not nurse at night now even though she's "allowed." (Prior to pregnancy she was a super frequent all night nurser.) It wasn't an ideal solution, but it helped me to cope with the nausea/fatigue and it actually seemed to make her less frustrated.

[sachasmom]

nursing limits during second pregnancy?

Similar problem here to the 'painful at 6 weeks' poster. I am 8 weeks pregnant, and I had planned to just keep nursing my 3 year old, but .... Holy Cow it HURTS!!

I'm also exhausted and dehydrated beyond belief, way worse than the first pregnancy. And my son has started complaining that there's 'no milk' -- plus my normally calm and gentle nurser has suddenly turned into a frustrated maniac who's switching boobs every five seconds and squeezing my boobs really hard while nursing to 'make the milk come out' ... Which of course hurts even worse!

I have no desire to wean him and would theoretically be happy to keep nursing right through pregnancy, but I'm feeling like my body is telling me that it's overwhelmed. I'm trying to figure out ways to talk to him about it that he'll understand -- and that won't scare him or set up a bad attitude toward the new baby. I'm really hoping others who've been through this have advice about what's worked for them.....

[sachasmom]

I'm basically replying to this thread myself just to let people know what happened in case someone else has the same problem later.


I'm now at 13weeks. Milk seemed like it was completely drying up last month, but my son now says there's "a little" in there. He has largely self-weaned at this point, and is nursing only first thing in the morning and at bedtime. This is a big change since he was a humongous boob monkey ever since birth and was still nursing 8 or 9 times a day when I got pregnant again.

Things that really helped us:

I talked to him about it a lot, explaining that he is a big boy now and Mommy's body knows he doesn't need milk as much. We also talked about all the cool things he gets to do as a big boy, and how even hough there are some things about being a baby he misses being big is definitely more fun.

I let him keep nursing even though it hurt. I really tried never to outright say no. It just made I'm so distraught that I felt was way beyond a mere temper tantrum. Besides it only made him nurse more later!

I did use delaying and distraction plenty though. Especially offering him something to eat that I knew he liked before he asked to nurse. He used to always nurse when he got home from school, but we've replace it with a joint snack, which he really does seem to enjoy.

That's all I can offer at this point. Our situation is a little complicated by the fact that we've had prior pregnancy losses and therefore aren't yet telling him about this one until we're sure we're out of the woods. But I heard from other people that it's not a great idea to tell the older child the milk is stopping because of the new baby. So on balance I might still have waited to get through this before having that conversation.

I am sort of hooping we can maintain this pattern of morning and bedtime nursing. I didn't really want to wean him but I felt like my body was just saying enough already. And he was such a heavy nurser that I honestly didn't see how tandem nursing was going to work. But this seems to be giving him the nursing connection he needs in a more low key way that works for me too.

Hope that info helps anyone who finds herself in the same situation....