How do you help them wean?

[Slingin'Momto4]

I am still nursing my 3 1/2 yr old but I am DONE, she is not! How do I help her know its time for "boobies" to go away? She is obsessed, especially at night! Please help! Thanks

[raelize]

what i did was not child led, but it was very gentle. i didn't have a problem nursing while pregnant, or tandem nursing until dd1 turned 3 and then suddenly she HAD TO STOP. so, i would pick an hour during each section of the day that she couldn't nurse. for example, i picked between 9 and 11 in the morning, and 2-4 in the afternoon. any other time i would nurse her, but if she asked between then, then i would not. i would say that she couldn't nurse but that if seh wanted to nurse then she was thirsty, hungry or wanted attention from me, so was she thirsty, hungry or did she wnt to snuggle and read a book? then, every month i would increase the time restrictions. soon she was only nursing once around 5 in the afternoon.
then i stopped nursing then ( and that was the only time that she really threw a fit about it). it took about 11 months. for the night nursing, she was sleeping through the night by age 3, so it was only the nursing to sleep issue. but i just kept cutitng it short. going from 20 minutes to 15 the next week, to 10 the next week, to 5, then to 3 and then to 1 (really i did 1 minute) she was okay with all of this.
she is almost 5 and she tells me that she would like to start nursinf again, so, who knows, but she went along with this really well.

[annettemarie]

Moving out of CLW and into Breastfeeding Beyond Infancy.