Can i get some advice...?

[GoBecGo]

I was hoping there'd be stickies here for the likes of me, but there are none so i guess i'll just ask and hopefully you wise ladies can help.

Are there any good books about nursing older babies/toddlers/kids?  Everything i own is about the newborn phase, establishing supply, troubleshooting mastitis and returning to work type issues.  They all end very sweetly with a "and just keep going as long as you both want to" but there's nothing about the problems one might encounter or the patterns of feeding or....i don't know, there's just nothing ABOUT it.  And IRL i only know 2 women who nursed longer than 6 or 7 months, and one of those actually wanted to wean a lot sooner but had a hard time saying "no" (so she says).

So i feel i'm totally lacking a village for this phase.

DD is 11months.  With DD1 i lost my milk (thyroid issues) when she was 7mo, so i never got this far.  DD2 has been a dream, my thyroid problems have been well controlled and everything's going great.  We began solids at 6months (well, just past, as soon as she seemed interested basically) but i'd say she's only really been eating a decent amount (and pooping every day) for the past month or 6 weeks.  She's happy and active though hitting her fine motor milestones early and her gross motor skills late (DD1 did this too).  So she can unlock, change function and make a call (!!!) on my smartphone (despite me trying to prevent her getting ahold of it!) but isn't crawling yet.

So this seems a bit stupid but...what do you do next?  After the baby turns one, does one keep nursing on demand?  Try to limit feeds?  Night wean?  Everything one sees in mainstreamish (i.e. with older kids nursing but NOT crunchy) things seems to suggest that a "normal" pattern is 1-3 feeds a day around 12 months, but even though DD is eating well she still has 7-9 feeds in 24hours.  Do those other momma's cut their babies down to those few feeds?  Should i be doing that (assuming i have no real preference)?

And night weaning - why?  Is is because Mama's need more sleep or does it allow babies to sleep longer?  DD still feeds at midnight, 4am and 6-8am inclusive, so it'd be a big deal for us if she cut all that out.  I also think her temperament (easily frustrated, long memory, sensitive and quick to tears) means that she'd cope best with night weaning if she was old enough to understand "breasts are going night night, we can nurse again tomorrow" rather than me, right now, telling her "no" all night.  She cannot be comforted to sleep without basically crying in arms until she's tired enough that the rocking of being walked with helps her nod off.  Neither DP nor i want to be doing that.  DD1 slept for 12 hours every night by this phase (she was also on 4 bottles of FF and a lot of solids by now, no BM at all), so i don't know what is "normal" as regards all this stuff with BFing.

DD2 doesn't drink much except from me, maybe 4oz/water from her cup a day, if that.  So i'd be worried about hydration if i cut down too...

We currently co-sleep with her cot (with the side off) side-carred to the bed and the mattresses at the same height, but she's on the cusp of crawling and once she does we plan to put the side back on the cot and move the mattress down as our bed is high, our room has electrical things in it and the house isn't big enough (nor do we really want to) for us to move to a mattress on the floor (we don't have anywhere else to store the bed/stuff we'd have to move out.  Ultimately we'd like DD2 into DD1's bedroom but we're not in a particular rush for that either.  How is one supposed to know if night nursings are nutritionally vital or suckling to get back to sleep after being woken by a tossing/snoring parent?

Oh this is a big ramble!  To make it all worse the pressure is beginning from MIL and SIL's to wean her and though i KNOW i am not doing that before she's 2, the idea of a whole year of this pressure is really tiring to me.  I could use a village who know it's normal to BF a toddler.

[D_McG]

I don't think there is a right or wrong way to handle it. I just went with my gut with my second (with my first I did the 'on demand' thing for way too long, thinking he'd outgrow it in a timeframe that kept me sane but he did not). So for us cutting down to a predictable schedule around a year and weaning (day and night) between 18 mos and 2 worked great.

the problem for me with 'on demand' in the second year is that it seemed to hold DS back from developing other soothing habits. I know some people are fine to have nursing be the main thing but it really didn't work for us. OTOH I know people nursing 2 year olds 15 times a day and they find it perfectly fine.

I would say to keep doing what you're doing until it starts to feel wrong!

[GoBecGo]

Oh thank you for replying!  It's just good to hear from someone else who is doing this!

The other thing which i find hard to reconcile is that while DD1 and DD2 seem to have equally strong suckling needs, DD1 sucked her own thumb from about 8 weeks old (still does though only when she's tired/going to sleep).  DD2 sucks only me.  She sure seems to NEED to suck, and went through a phase of gumming her thumbs, but she never took to sucking them.  So at what point is it ok for me to say "no sucking just now"?  I struggle with this - i still suck MY thumb, age 30, and i do think this was due to several factors, 1) being weaned from BF too soon (for me, at about 9months) and 2) being sexually abused from age 5, when i would likely have begun to wind up the thumb sucking on my own.

I just fed her down for a nap and then when she woke 40mins later (she and i are both overtired and unhappily i risked a coffee at exactly the wrong time so her pre-nap feed was caffeinated!) i did so again.  I guess i will feel, as you do, when it's "right" to begin changing things.  It's funny, i've watched so many animals BF, and they never seem to worry about all this - they just BF whenever they feel like it until they don't feel like it and then discourage the young until both have reached the point where the milk is never sought or allowed.  It's one of the times when the ability to intellectualise is probably not doing me any favours....

[PatioGardener]

First of all, CONGRATULATIONS! Nursing until 11 months (and beyond) is awesome, and not always easy.

I have a 12 month old, and we are nursing too. He's my first. I have few IRL friends nursing toddlers too.

Here's our situation - perhaps hearing from someone else will normalize things for you.

I nurse my DS when he asks to nurse, or when I think he needs to nurse. Now, I should say that he is not yet verbal, and is a busy little guy, so during the day it is every 3 hours or so when we are together. On top of that I nurse for injuries, I nurse when I'm on the phone and need him to be quiet, and I nurse when we've been apart and need connection time, to name a few. I nurse whenever it feels right.

At night we cosleep, and he nurses when he needs to. I have no problems nursing him at night. He sleeps well, and will not nurse if he doesn't need to. He actually gets upset if I offer and what he really needs is to go pee! Nursing is awesome - it settles him back down and we both get great sleep.

I am quite insistent that there is no picking, pinching or nipple grabbing, and with redirection he can cope with that.

I can't imagine changing our routine (or lack thereof!) because it works really well. He's happy, I'm happy, he's getting great nutrition and emotional support. I know the relationship will mature as he matures. I'm looking forward to nursing him as he grows and becomes a full-fledged toddler.

[GoBecGo]

See, we're having problems with pinching right now.  But she's SO SO good at her pincer grasp and she just loves to fiddle with pinchy touches.  She will not be redirected.  I have to try to side-lie and hold both of her hands to prevent her pinching, and if i do that she wrestles to be free and then back to pinching.  If i end the nursing session she screams hysterically until i resume nursing (and 9 times out of ten goes immediately back to pinching).  TBH i just think this phase will pass as she gets bigger, she only really does it when she's really tired, it's almost like as she drifts off her body continues to "practice" her current skill she's learning/honing.  Sometimes it drives me mad and i end the session and let her scream (usually DP takes pity on her then and removes her for a cuddle and a gentle chat about not hurting mama).  Sometimes i put up with it.  Sometimes she doesn't do it.  She did, about 2 months ago, go through a biting phase and i wouldn't say anything i did ended it, she just stopped needing to do it after a few weeks.

[PatioGardener]

Pinching was hard.

Things that helped me were:

1) keeping his nails really really short. I clipped every 48 hours for a couple of weeks.

2) wearing clothing that did not allow skin access

3) letting him fiddle with a necklace, or toy etc instead of making me bleed

4) holding his hands in mine (but keeping them moving - it was key that his hands moved for some reason!)

5) seeing my friend go through this exact same thing about 6 months ahead of me, and knowing that it was a short phase.

His latest phase is 'dive-bombing' my breast with a huge open (tooth-filled) mouth. Lazy-in-bed nursing sessions have moved to a chair for now!