It is time to reclaim my body, and my personal life. I need to feel good about going back to work, I need to feel like I could let Ollie spend the night at my sister's house so, gasp!, maybe FTD and I could have a romantic weekend away! There is no way around it, I am ready to wean Ollie, and I hope he is ready too.
I have done the research on proper weaning and learned there are two possibilities to weaning:
1. Ollie self weans. He just decides he is over the boobs and no longer has interest in nursing. So far, that does not seem to be the case.
2. I wean Ollie one feeding at a time.
I read that I cannot just stop nursing cold turkey because it may traumatize Ollie, and cause me serious pain from engorgement and many other unsavory side effects. The proper way to wean is to cut out one feeding at a time. Staring with the one feeding the child will most likely not miss. Once I have successfully cut out the one feeding for a week, I can move on to cutting out the next feeding. I do this one feeding per week until I am down to the last feeding, which will be his nighttime feeding. Then I am to let FTD put him down for a week or so with a sippy cup of milk. Then voila! No more nursing!
Ok, let me just say that the above mentioned plan is SO much easier said than done. There is no way this is going to work so smoothly for me and Ollie. First of all, I am nearly a week into this plan and not one feeding has been missed! I nurse Ollie to sleep for naps and to sleep at night, I tried to cut out his late afternoon nursing before his nap, and failed, epically. He cried, and refused to nap, I ended up nursing him to sleep. So, until I can figure out how to get him down for a nap without nursing, I am stuck at square one!
I also have one other small problem, I can't get myself to give him cows milk, or almond or soy milk for that matter. I have milk, good milk, why would I give him anything else? Oh and one more thing, I have never ever been able to pump a full bottle. Never. Ever. So, yes, after a year of nursing I do not have one bottle stored up.
After a few days of hoping for a miracle, this weaning business is going to be hard work. Which, I cannot believe I worked my ass off to nurse my child, and now here I am working my ass off to stop nursing my child! WTF is that? I know I need to toughen up if this is going to happen. I know I need to let him cry a little at nap times. I know I need to give him milk other than mine. I know if this is going to happen, it is up to me to make it happen.
To those moms reading this in the same boat, or even shaking your head about me wanting to give up such a beautiful bond between mother and child, I want you to know, I am just doing what seems right for me. I need to feel like a woman again, I want to go on crash diets and exercise like crazy, I want to squeeze into my old clothes and go out drinking with my girlfriends. I have made some crazy sacrifices over the last year, I am proud of myself and my baby. It is just time that I put a little more focus on myself and my marriage. I want to move on from this.
I just have no idea what to do now, or if I am even going to be strong enough to make this happen! I want to super bad... I think. I think I am ready. But who knows, maybe I am going to have some strange withdrawals from nursing. Regardless, I am going to need to figure out how to start weaning before I worry about being sad about it.
Shit. To be continued....
I would love to hear if you have any experience, or ideas. Are you weaning too? What works?
Maybe my biggest problem is figuring out how to say no to this face!
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