Thought I wanted to do CLW now second guessing

[Shannie77]

My DD1 is 3.5 and I have a 4 month old DD2. I always thought I would let DD1 wean herself. I have always enjoyed nursing her. During my pregnancy it was really painful but I stuck with it. She wasn't nursing that much either. After DD2 was born she started nursing a lot. Now she is waking up at least 4 times a night to nurse (before it was once or twice). She is basically day weaned now. Mostly because she is busy doing stuff.

I feel like I am losing my mind. I actually did in desperation try to nightwean her. I gave it a week and then gave up. She would have the most horrific, long lasting tantrums when I didn't let her nurse.

When I am nursing her at night I just feel rage. She grab my other breast over and over to matter how many times I move her hand. Often I will dose off and wake up with her fondling my other breast. I have twice now gotten a cut and bruise on my nipple from the two of us falling asleep with her nursing.

Honestly at night I feel so close to spanking her... something I obviously never do or would do. But at night it is all I can do to stay calm.

It is like being tortured. If I let her continue I feel like I am going crazy, and if I try to stop her i have to endure her tantrums. I am working from home plus teaching ballet and caring for my new DD. I just can't deal with being so tired.

Sometimes I feel so resentful because I did a lot of reading and everyone seemed to say that their children nightweaned on their own, or at least were down to once a night by 2 or 3. I had so much faith that if I just stuck with it things would all work out but now it just seems like her night nursing is getting more and more out of hand.

We talk a lot about not nursing at night anymore. I keep hoping she will try on her own but it doesn't look like that will happen anytime soon.

What would you do?

For the record DH is of no use. I love him but night time parenting is something he just can't handle.

[Shannie77]

I should add that I am going to try to set up her toddler bed next to my bed and see if sleeping next to me but not in my bed might help a bit. Right now it is me DD1 and DD2 in the same bed. DH sleeps in DD1s room.

[GoBecGo]

i would wean. that's probably not much help, but i would, i would wean. FOR ME (ymmv) CLW is only worthwhile if the other half of the equation, the nursee (or nurser? the mom anyway!) is also happy. I don't see the value of getting enraged with a child, unless there are serious dietary issues that BM are helping a lot with (even then, i would pump). The idea of her fiddling with the un-nursed breast, of you waking injured, it just sounds horrible, untenable. I worked as a teen on a brood farm and i can't tell you how many mares i saw kicking their 9-12month offspring off when they tried to nurse. Those were sweet mares having some strong reactions, i don't see why humans would be much different. If i hate it when i'm at your stage (and i think you're WONDERFUL for the start you gave her) i would happily quit and not look back.

Now, you don't sound like you WANT to wean. You sound like you could handle one feed a night, or maybe even a nightweaned kid who nursed in the day once, and maybe you can work towards that? Can you delay rather than refuse a nursing without a tantrum? can you use distraction? I think moving her to a bed a bit farther from the breast is a great idea. Hopefully someone with better advice will come along soon!

[tibeca]

CLW'ing isn't always the right answer for everyone. Especially if doing so will make mommy a "not so good mommy." You don't have to completely wean her in order to get more/better sleep.

Have you tried allowing her to nurse, but limiting time? Limiting time would mean that you wouldn't fall asleep, and therefore not fall pray to any of the other problems. With my DD, in order to encourage night weaning, I started by saying that at night, she could only nurse for 1 minute. We talked about it a lot before we started and I helped her understand the new plan. She was 2y plus a few months when we started. If she woke up and asked, she got to nurse on each side, for 1 minute (this was a minute I counted in my head, not by timer). Sometimes she cried, I didn't allow her to do more whine/complain a little before giving her a choice. Sometimes that choice was to cuddle next to mommy, near my breasts. Another option was being fed some water by sippy cup. We would snuggle and I would feed her the water, cuddled next to me. If she was really upset, then I allowed her to nurse again for 1 more minute, each side. It was sometimes exhausting, and sometimes we went back and forth for 3 or 4 times. She eventually got the picture and would only occasionally ask, and now only nurses maybe once or twice a night. She actually tells me when she asks, "Mommy, milk for 1 minute please."

I found it really important to talk to my daughter about how I felt and why I wanted to get more sleep at night. I talked about how all day she could ask to nurse and I would say yes, but that night time was for sleeping. I talked about being a big girl and being sure that she understood that I wasn't saying she couldn't nurse, just that I needed to sleep.

Its hard to make the decision to night wean and even harder when you meant to completely CLW. BUT, doing CLW when you are so miserable does not teach your child the value of human connection/love/respect that nursing is so valued for. Nursing is also an opportunity to teach your child about respecting other people's needs too, and that is why this could be such an important lesson. Teach your child that mommy deserves respect too.

Much luck in your decision/process.

[Pepper44]

My DD turned 4 in July. I have a 5 month old DD also. Tandem nursing has been very exhausting for me. I stuck it out through painful pregnancy nursing, but now I've had to limit it for my own sanity. DD has what she calls good morning milk and good night milk. She can only nurse for a few minutes, I tell her get her last sip as a warning. This is working very well for us. I also had to move her to a toddler bed next to our bed, otherwise she wants to nurse all night along with the baby. She picked the toddler bed from the store, so it was really exciting...

[rightkindofme]

My daughter is not quite 2.5 and I have a 2 month old. I'm going insane. I nightweaned long ago for my own sanity but my 2.5 year old is bugging me to nurse every half hour all.day.long. She would like to stop eating food and just nurse. I can't handle this. I think I'm going to grit my teeth (which my dentist would rather I not do because I'm cracking teeth) and try to make it to 3 so she doesn't associate the weaning with the new baby. I feel bad but I don't think there is anyway I can make it to CLW.

[steedalyn]

I sympathize so much! :(  I wanted to CLW my DD (who is 20mos) but I have been steadily cutting her back since about the end of July.  I just get these awful feelings most of the time when I nurse her now.  I get angry and just the feeling of her nursing makes me so uncomfortable I want to jump out of my skin.  We are down to mostly twice a day now, sometimes 3 but I have mostly cut off the morning session and want to give up the naptime session too.  We had to night wean her around a year because I was only getting about 4hrs of sleep a night, for months.  I was getting depressed and miserable and not being as good a mommy as I should have been.  I just get the feeling she would NEVER wean if I didn't cut her back. 

[annettemarie]

I'm going to move this out to BBI since you seem to be open to and are receiving advice beyond CLW.

[porcelina]

I just posted about this too. I am also tandem nursing an 8 weeker and my almost 3 year old. I stuck it out through pregnancy because he clearly was not ready to let it go. Now, I am more than ready, and I'm pretty sure he will be ready too. I started telling him a week or two ago that he will be too old to nurse when he is three. I'm a little worried he will associate it with the baby, but I'm hoping that 3 months difference will be enough, and I'm glad we have the cutoff of his 3 year old birthday coming up so soon! We also do 2-3 sessions per day, and they are very limited. I give him a one-minute warning, count down from 10, switch sides, and then 1 minute warning again. The max he gets is usually about 3 mins on one side, and the min is about 30 seconds (a minute goes by really fast when you count as fast as you can from 0 to 60 or don't even bother counting). This has made it bearable for me for the last few weeks. We had a week or two of confusion where I let him "help" me with oversupply, did some tandem nursing at the same time, etc., when the baby first came, but we had been at this same amount of nursing prior to baby being born. He seems fine with this schedule.

I've been telling him about all the things he will do/get when he is 3 (bicycle!) and that he will stop nursing, and that he will be ready. I do it about every day while nursing, and the other day he was repeating it back to me during the day, so I know he's getting it. I plan to go cold turkey because I know there will be some crying involved for any change (there always has been for any change to nursing), and I'd rather get it all done with at once rather than draw it out. Oh, and as much as I talk about nighttime is for nursing, and he gets it during the day, he still asks to nurse every morning at 4-5.30 am when he wakes up. He usually totally gets things during the day, but at night he's a whole different animal. I also anticipate some serious tantrums when I stop nursing him!

Anyway, I totally get where you're coming from!! It's hard enough with an almost-3 latch! Hope you can find the right solution for your family!