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Attachment Parenting
musicalmama5
member
TiffanyBerry
musicalmama5
member
I read in another thread that your daughter recently self-weaned. I'm not sure if "congrats" is the appropriate response, but I felt like we should somehow commemorate the occasion! It's a huge milestone. I'm curious what your feelings are about it.
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Re: TiffanyBerry
Yeah, about a week and a half ago, she was nursing at bedtime and, after something like 15 minutes, said she couldn't get any "booby nulp". (Before bed was our only nursing session. I weaned the morning one about a month ago, when she was 3.5yrs, because I felt like I could continue nursing as long as she wanted, without negative feelings about it, if it was just once a day, and not first bloody thing in the morning. Which, since I am sleeping in bed with her by that time, is really, literally first thing. She had dropped the third and fourth session just after she turned three when she dropped her nap and the associated before and after nursing. And I nixed the fifth, which was in the middle of the night, a month or so before that.)
She cried a bit, and I tried to console her - well, really just be there for her, because I totally get that it's a super sad change for her. She kept saying, over and over, "But I always get a little booby milk on that side, then some water, then more booby milk on the other side and now ... I can't any more! " It was some combination of heartbreaking and adorable. When my husband went upstairs to lay with her a bit after I had to go (I leave to walk the dog during part of them bedtime routine), she was asking him, "But babies need milk. Can we still have a baby? How will it get milk?!" (Note, however, that we are somewhere between one and done, and maybe on the fence. There is no actual baby planned for the future.) He proceeded to tell her about hormones.
The next night, she didn't even want to try at first, but about 15 minutes later, she said she wanted to, and tried for a long time (like 10 minutes), but said she want getting anything. Which was interesting, because I tried to hand express the night before, after she fell asleep, and had no problem spraying milk across the room (well, not really at the oversupply levels I had three years ago, but far from empty). Since I knew there was some milk, I was surprised, but her latch did feel a little different. But I didn't push, and we spent some more time with her crying (a little) and asking questions about why there wasn't any more booby milk and how she always had booby milk, and so on.
She generally mentions it every day still, and every night, but we got past tears after two days and crying within five or six. Now, randomly during the day or at night, she will say "Mommy, you know, I've been thinking about booby milk ALL day," or will mention, with a cup of milk in her hands, "I used to get booby milk, but I can't any more, so now I drink this milk."
I'm ... Not really sad about it. Sad for her that it happened in a way that made her sad, but it's ok to be sad! I am a little sad to have our bedtime routine changed - we are still trying to re-work it so it isn't a pain in the butt. And I'm a little ... nostalgic? ... to not have that connection. She not a higher or a cuddler, though she loves physical contact on her own terms! So we don't have that as a replacement.
But after three and a half years, starting off with three months of a tortuous latch and it never getting to better than "mildly annoying", I'm happy to have my breasts back to myself and to experience less irritation. And I'm super happy that I didn't have to press the issue to drop the last session myself, because I think that would have been harder on our relationship. (I was concerned she might not choose to self-wean by five, which was my quasi-cutoff.)