Ramifications of stopping for a week?

[WaturMama]

A brief background on where we are:

My ds is weaning very, very slowly--some steps have been led by me, most have been led by him. For quite a while he was just nursing "3 sides" in the morning, except more when he was sick. ("3 sides" means right-left-right or left-right-left.) When he turned 6 recently he went 3 days over his birthday weekend without nursing. That was the longest ever. I think he was just so excited he jumped out of bed every day. After that I asked him if he wanted to stop. He said, no, but he would go down to 2 sides, which he did (I like the balance of 2!), and he said when he is 7 he will go down to 1 side. !!

My question:

I am 44 and my dh and I have been trying to conceive #2 for more than 2 years. I am considering taking Letrozole to increase our chance of conceiving. I would need to take it for 5 days and it takes 48 hours to leave the system. I don't think I should nurse while taking it, so that would be a week. I am guessing if I told ds we needed to take a break for a week and I told him why, he'd understand. My worry is what if I got to the end of the week and my milk was gone. That would seem so unfair to him and is not what I want. I think he is still nursing for a reason.

Has anyone gone a week without nursing at a similar stage of weaning and can tell me about your experience with that?

[NewBeginnings1]

Sorry, no experience here. Could you buy or rent a pump for a week to keep up the supply?

[~pi]

I think it varies by person, but for what it's worth, I started traveling for work when DS was 2, and by the time he was 3, I was gone for nearly a week at a time regularly. I think he was nursing twice a day at age 3 (mornings were a big deal, bedtime less so.)

After the first trip, I never bothered pumping. I would get a little full by the end of the week, but I never lost my supply. And I did not start with a bountiful supply (I mean, I had enough, but never got engorged, sprayed milk, any of those signs.)

I think once you have a good supply established and the child is nursing only once or twice a day, it takes quite a while for the milk to fully disappear. DS is still nursing now at nearly age 5; I have been gone for 20+ trips at this point, he has gone to visit grandparents for a week, etc.

Good luck with conceiving, however you decide to go at it. :-)

[WaturMama]

Oh, thank you ~pi, that sounds very similar to my situation. That makes sense to me.