[dejagerw]

If you practice CLW, how often did (or does) your 3 year old nurse? My son in 2.5 right now and still nurses ALL THE TIME! He seriously nurses more than my 4 month old. I'm finding it really hard dealing with all his requests. He often asks at the most inopportune times and then gets hysterical if I say "not now". I'd like for him wean when he's ready, but inside I almost wish he'd just be nursing a couple times a day, rather than too many to count. I really need to have an idea of when his nursing might slow down. I don't want him weaned, I just don't want him nursing constantly.

 

[Mama2Rio]

DD will be 3 next month. she has a few time where she slowed way downs and then she'll bump up to 12 times a day and through the night. She still doesn't have all her teeth, we're waiting on 2 more molars, 2 just came in a few weeks ago and when that started, she was nursing a lot. before those teeth came in i think she was down to about 4 times a day and now it seem like every 2 hours when i'm around. If she's just with DH she doesn't ask. I think once the last 2 teeth come in, she'll slow down again. at one point she was sleeping through the night but i don't know what happened with that. i don't have much of an answer, my DD is sporadic with nursing and not much of a pattern. The age your LO is at, i don't think you can reason with them to wait. Eventually they will catch on, just be sure to follow through. (ie: "mom needs to finish cooking right now and when i'm done you can have mama milk." and let him nurse when your done with xyz even if he's forgotten).

 

[Katie T]

My DD2 will be three in 2 wks and nursing all the time. Even when we are outside playing/working she has to nurse and goes into melt down if you make her wait too long. She also has to nurse to sleep and all night long. Maybe when she is 6 she will be down to only a couple times a day. lol

Good luck I keep telling myself it will be worth it in the end and we will miss it when they are done.

 

[kdaisy]

Constant 3 yo nurser here too.

I think when you are tandem nursing you will inevitably get an older child who nurses more. At least in my case, every time I nurse DD, DS seems to think,"oh what a great idea."

 

[lil-ladybug]

My daughter just turned 3 and we are with you, constant nursing in our house. Some days she nurses less, especially when we stay really busy, but those days she also nurses more at night to make up for it. She is my only so it hasn't been too hard on me, but as we are thinking of having another, the constant nursing poses a lot of questions for my husband and me. There are days when she will nurse more than she did when she was an infant for sure. But then I think of the wonderful connection we have and I do think it's all worth it.

 

[~Amy~]

My three year old nurses twice a day. He sometimes will ask for a third time and usually I attempt to distract him with a game or book instead. He nurses to sleep and first thing in the morning. He doesn't wake to nurse at night unless he's ill.

 

[bugglette]

At 3, my son nursed to bed, back to sleep (if he happened to wake in the night) and in the morning before starting his day. It was very gradual, but now (at 3yrs 8mo) he barely latches for 2 seconds before turning on to his back and falling asleep (with a hand on a breast, of course). I don't know if his nursing less is a direct result of this new pregnancy, but he said a couple weeks ago that the "doo-tees" were broken so I don't believe I'm producing right now. I often wonder if he will start again when my milk returns for baby.

 

[Asiago]

I thought of this post as I just read some interesting info:

http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/priscilla_colletto.html

Quote:

For their 3-year-olds, the average interval between nursings is 80 minutes. It is interesting to compare these practices to the standard recommendation given to new mothers today of 8 to 12 nursings in a 24-hour period.

In a thought provoking article, "The Concept of Weaning: Definitions and Their Implications" (Journal of Human Lactation, June 1996), Ted Greiner points to research in northern Bangladesh where children who were breastfed at 3-4 years of age received the breast 9-10 times a day and those who were still breastfed at 4-5 years of age received it 7-9 times a day.

 

[blackannis]

Ugh, you've got my sympathy, particularly on the meltdowns. My DS tends to only want to nurse when he's tired, but if I try to tell him no, we get a huge tantrum. Since this generally happen at home, we usually let him just go through it, though this has been causing some conflict recently and I'm starting to wonder if perhaps sometimes children give us negative signs that it's time to wean (see thread I just posted for more on this).

 

[Shanny2032]

My daughter will be 3 on 12/1. While I have always wanted the final decision on weaning to be hers it has been clear to me for a long time (after 18 months) that in order for this relationship to continue and us both to be happy in it that I would need to implement rules in between infancy and weaning. I night weaned her at 21 months, cut out the morning nursing (which kept getting pushed back and turned into night nursing again) around 2.5. We stopped NIP around 2 ish I think. Now she nurses at nap and bedtime. She has gone to sleep both times without if she is at school for nap or skips it etc. I have no problem saying no and cannot imagine myself nursing her on demand at this point. It just wouldn't work for us. I can see where nursing a new baby would make a 3 year old want to nurse more for sure! If it isn't working for you, maybe you need to look at cutting him back on your time table instead of his. Nursing for years takes a lot of commitment and like I said - it is a relationship. If you need something in the relationship to change in order to save it from ending completely then I'd say that is what you should do.

 

[etsdtm99]

I'll start by saying that I got pregnant when DS was 20ish months and that caused him to cut back dramatically on nursing .. he to not even asking every day by the time the baby was born - baby turned 1 today and he is 3 yrs 4 months and nurses 1-2 times a day, for the past year or more he has been able to understand 'wait' so i almost always tell him to wait until later if it is not morning or bedtime .. he goes through week long phases where he does not ask to nurse at all, in those cases i offer about every other day , otherwise i wait for him to ask .. the only other time he asks to nurse is when my 1 yr old is nursing AND i have the other side 'out' (casue i still leak, so i undo my shirt and stick a burp cloth over that side and sometimes it falls off.. if he sees that, he dives for me .. i have other nursing rules too - no whining, no wiggling etc. generally, i don't consider us as CLWers, i couldn't handle this without setting limits.

 

[frogurt]

My one child stopped at 3. I'd say the biggest cut-back time was between 2.5 and 3. It slowly went from 2x a day to once a day to every other day, then once a week, then not at all.

 

[CheriK]

Current nursling will be 3 in 6 weeks, my older two nursed until well beyond 3 ;-) All of mine nursed "more than a newborn" at 2 1/2. And I never tandem nursed (older 2 were twins), so there was no new baby to bring more milk. There were definitely periods of time when I was going completely crazy with the constant demands to nurse. It does get easier! They get more flexible and more willing to accept other forms of comfort or food. And you become better at predicting when an inconvenient request to nurse is likely to occur, and offering a substitute before they ask. With all of mine at this age, I found that once they've thought of nursing, it's hard to get them to accept something else. So if you can plan ahead and offer food or a cuddle or whatever before they think to ask for milk, you're more likely to successfully avoid the meltdown. 2 1/2 year olds are pretty insistent that they want whatever it is they want whenever they want it(doesn't just apply to nursing!). And by 3, they can understand a discussion beforehand if you want to avoid nursing during a certain event or for a certain time (for instance, my older two went to a co-op nursery school at this age & we talked ahead of time about how they couldn't nurse at school - never had an issue with it).

I night weaned my twins at 2 1/2, which made a big difference in my sanity and tolerance. Haven't (yet!) with my DD, but I am considering it as I have insomnia and the night waking coupled w/ my own inability to sleep makes for a tired, grumpy Mommy. We have limits at night, though. I can handle her nursing on both sides, but if she starts switching back/forth, I tell her "you can nurse until I count to 10, then it's time to roll over and go back to sleep." Almost always works. She's a busy little girl and loves to be out/about, so getting her out of the house and keeping her busy with friends or at the playground or another outing basically stops the requests to nurse. And remembering to FEED her helps - sometimes we get so busy and she isn't good at sitting down with us to eat, that I realize she hasn't eaten all day when it's lunchtime. Still, it's amazing to me how she can nurse every 20 minutes on one day and only 3-4 times on others, but she does.

I do wonder how much of the constant requests to nurse that you're hearing are due to a new sibling. Your DS might be asking so much because he knows it's a sure way to get your attention or reconnect with you. If you're busy with a new baby, it may also be his way of asking you to slow down and spend more time at his speed, focusing on things that are important to him. If possible, you might spend a few days really just focusing on his needs and wants, getting down on the floor and playing with him as much as possible, ignoring all the other daily chores (the laundry isn't going to go anywhere, after all!) and see if that makes a difference. Sometimes our kids are trying to tell us something when their demands go beyond our tolerance.

 

[parsley]

My daughter is 3 1/2 and I'm 23 weeks pregnant. She nurses 4-8 times a day. When she was 2 1/2-3 she nursed 8-14 times a day on average. When she was a newborn... it would have been easier to count how many times she wasn't nursing.

For the most part I enjoy our nursing relationship. I also know it's very important to her and I don't want to end it or limit it, especially as I think that will lead to jealousy toward her baby sister when she comes.

That said, around 2 when she asked to nurse in public I told her that we could but we would need to go somewhere private where the two of us could be alone. I didn't like feeling like a water fountain! And, about 9 months ago I stared ignoring some of her night nursing requests. If she repeated herself I would oblige but I started waiting to see if the desire was strong. I see nursing as a relationship-- that means we both need to feel good about it.

*I just scrolled up and saw that the original message is 4 months old. OP, I hope you found some ways to make things easier and/or the phase passed!

 

[rumi]

When mine was 3 it was on average 3x day, and 3 x night if you count once to sleep, once to wake up, and once in between. 3 was also an age when dd was venturing out more on her own, and also an age when she got sick several times and those times she was nursing round the clock. I was always grateful those times that she was nursing.

OP - If you are looking for a way to make the demand more manageable, things that come to mind are

- keep plenty of healthy snacks available for grazing. Carry them in little boxes when you go out.

- encourage more night-nursing and nap-nursing

maybe you are already doing these, but I thought that it might help, esp when you mention "inopportune times" I am just thinking that maybe nursing is the first thing that comes to his mind, whereas if he got in the habit of having other snacks, they would come to mind just as readily, whether he is hungry or needs comfort food.