Need help weaning a tot :-(

[Debobu]

HI 

I need to wean my 2 yrs 3 month child. I had hoped for him to self wean but I won't be able to do that for medical reasons.

I feel pretty overwhelmed and don't know what the best way to do this is. I want to do it gradually but can't wait months, ideally it would be good if he could be fully weaned in a month or a month and a half :(

So far he has been nursed on demand. I am a SAHM so he nurses often-mostly for short periods of time to check in with me....

He does not have a schedule-it is pretty arbitrary and changes a lot depending on what we do.

He is nursed to sleep both for nap and night time (although I have been successful a couple of times lately not nursing him to fall asleep at night).

He wakes up a few times during the night and asks to nurse. We co-sleep.

He also nurses a lot in the early morning in bed and then in the living room once we are up and throughout the day he will nurse randomly but often if we are home-when he is bored, hungry tired, upset, etc....

Then he nurses before dinner and after bath-before bed (mostly to fall asleep).

I feel confused as to how to do this-I can't "cut a feeding" because he nurses randomly and on demand...

Do I night wean him first? Do I try to cut the quick, random sessions of the day first? Do I try to get him to learn to fall asleep without the breast before night weaning him? I feel I need to have a plan but don't know what that is....

I never really put serious limits on our nursing relationship so I feel I am starting from scratch now when I actually need to wean him :-(

I feel bad upsetting him and feel sad and upset myself at the prospect of our nursing relationship ending. :-(

Help please? 

Thanks

 

[xelakann]

Hi,

since you mentioned that you don't have a set nursing schedule maybe I'd start with that first. I am in the process of weaning my daughter. We didn't have a regular nursing schedule either... some days she'd nurse all day long, some days she'd just nurse in the morning and and night. It really depended on our schedule that day and her mood.

A couple weeks ago I had a major surgery that required several days in the hospital and lots of pain medication... I had planned on her being totally weaned, but she just wouldn't and I had a hard time just cutting her off. Though I did reduce how often we nurse, here's what I did:

For my sanity I started with the night nursing. When she'd wake up wanting milk, I'd send my hubby in with water or sippy cup of milk. Sometimes that would piss her off and sometimes it was fine. I feel really lucky because after several nights of my hubby going in she stopped trying to nurse. She started sleeping through the night (aside from illness or teething). Then I worked on a day time schedule, morning, naps (2) and bedtime only. Once that was established I worked on the sessions easiest to cut out. Now we are just on morning and bedtime.

I will say that the surgery sorted aided in a lot of this. Because I was going to gone for several nights we HAD to get her used to having someone else put her to bed. Then during my stay in the hospital she refused to nurse. Since I've been home I haven't been able to pick her or hold her, but I can still nurse her. Since she couldn't get snuggles otherwise I was fine with continuing. However now I am ready to wean her again. So I will work on cutting out her last two feedings. 

[elisheva]

I'll share my experience, FWIW. By the time my kids are two, I have been tandem nursing so that has already cut down the amount of time they got to nurse... I always night-weaned first - they got to nurse to sleep but after that, no nursing until the sun came up. Having water handy was helpful at times if they were really thirsty. After that, I just started setting firmer and firmer boundaries around nursing - you can nurse first thing in the morning, at nap time, and at bed time. Eventually I started to talk to them about how big boys don't nurse and soon they were going to be big boys. Work yourself down to once a day. Eventually, if they didn't ask, I didn't offer and we would go 1-2 days like this. Then they would ask and I would say, playfully, "Big boys don't have boobies!" and maybe grin and cuddle them some more. "Big boys have lots of cuddles, though!" was also helpful. 

I did find that my kids were pretty receptive to weaning around 28 months, but I understand that kids are different. 

[major_mama11]

We did similar- started w/ night weaning, using water brought by daddy as replacement, then cut down during the day.

We cut down during the day by limiting to only in one place, and trying to do fun toddler activities- going places, reading, etc to cut down on nursing requests. Then we got thrush for the umpteenth time, so I used the "nummies are sick" excuse  to stop altogether from there. By then she took it pretty well and only asked for a few days really.

Good luck!