What I Said to a Mom Struggling with Weaning

Here are some things I wish someone had told me, but I had to find these things out the hard way.

First, I must tell you that I've done attachment parenting for 8 1/2 years, tandem nursed 3 times, had 3 home births, and the longest any one of my children has nursed was 4 1/4 years. I am a natural childbirth educator and rabid extended breastfeeding advocate. I have cloth diapered through four children and eat almost exclusively home cooked organic food. I write these things not to "brag" but to let you know that I know where you're coming from. I am indeed a hard-core crunchified momma. That being said, I no longer "buy" some of what I once was fed. I have learned through painful hard experience and therapy that the "ideal" attachment parenting is not ideal if it takes you to the breaking point. It is an ideal to strive for, for many many good reasons, but if following your ideal is breaking you, getting you to the point where you might "hurt someone" then it is NOT God's will for you. Jesus says His yoke is "easy" and His burden is "light." It doesn't sound to me like your burden is easy or light. If your ideal is breaking you, then it must go. This is God's way of keeping us humble. If we could in fact live our ideals perfectly all of the time, then our pride would be exponential.

I have weaned three of my children. The first two were weaned the "gradual" way. I do not regret this, but I do regret some of what happened during these weanings. With the first weaning, I practiced the "don't offer, don't refuse" rule so strictly. I would nurse my older daughter every time she wanted to. Deep down, I resented my older child nursing. Not all the time, but enough. I truly believe that children can sense this. I think it makes them feel insecure, which especially for a little one like yours, who is trying to figure out his new place in the family now that the new little one has come along, makes him want comfort, which equals nursing. Nursing. And more nursing. I wanted so to please her, but I resented it so so badly. I didn't recognize that as the mother, I was half of the nursing relationship and if it wasn't working for me, it wasn't working for her either. It affected our relationship so badly that I went into therapy.

With the second tandem nursing experience, I had learned from the first experience. I set clear rules. I would only nurse her at nap time and bed time. She may have tested me on this, but she learned that I really only would nurse at those times, and she was OK with this. It was what I needed to do to feel some control over the situation. I still didn't like tandem nursing and I still resented it at times.

With the third weaning, when my daughter was a little over 2, we were in a horrible place: we had sold our house, bought a new house and moved our family of six, me having to pack our entire house when I was 9 months pregnant, I had just had a baby 9 days before we moved, my husband was buying a business, and everyone in the family except my husband caught the whooping cough (a horrible illness that lasted from the middle of May--three days after we moved-- until the first week of September). My five week old son was deathly ill and hospitalized and I had to live with him at the hospital for 8 days, during which time my next oldest child was abruptly weaned, as the hospital was an hour from our house.

My toddler had decided on her own 3 days before my son had to go to the hospital that she wanted to sleep in her own bed in a bedroom with her sisters. So within the space of about 3 weeks she had to move to a new house, leave neighbor friends, stop co-sleeping, have her mother disappear for over a week, get a horrible illness and then wean. I'm amazed she survived at all. But of all the three weanings I have done, this one was the easiest on myself and the child being weaned. I was confident that my decision was right and this confidence gave her stability.

I suppose I could have let her continue to nurse when I returned from the hospital, but I think I would have gone insane. I already had severe postpartum depression and whooping cough, coughing so severely that I pulled muscles in my chest. Tandem nursing was hard for me even in ideal circumstances, and this was about as far from ideal as possible. I firmly believe that it was right to wean my daughter. I do not believe I could have done it any differently under those circumstances.

That being said, I have not become an advocate for abrupt weaning. I DO think that a mother absolutely needs to listen FIRST to her own HEART and not to anyone else or to any other system. You said you're having nursing aversions. Your heart is telling you something. It sounds like your motherly instinct is that there is something NOT RIGHT about the way you and your son are nursing. You need to change something---perhaps only nursing at a certain time, or place, or maybe it is right to wean. Whatever you decide, I strongly suggest that you do whatever brings you peace, and then confidently stick to your plan. Your child can sense if you resent the nursing, and I believe can easily interpret this as resenting him which brings a great deal of insecurity.

Your child can also sense if you feel ambivalent. During the first two weanings, I felt "bad" about "having" to wean them, like it was some kind of punishment. Now I look at weaning as growing up, growing in independence, and that the kind of attachment that nursing provides can be transferred by the child to dependence on God, through prayer. That may sound kind of spurious, but I have said as much to my now older daughters when they talk about weaning, and wishing they could still nurse. I say, "God allows you to go through weaning because He doesn't want you to believe that your mother can meet all your needs. He wants you to learn to seek Him to comfort you, love you, and meet your needs." And this makes sense to them.