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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7 comments:
Could you try weaning him to a toddler formula? Might make the transition easier?
Oh no, sounds like quite the challenge! Firstly, good on you for reaching your goal of 1 year! That's awesome news, you should be very proud of yourself.
Secondly, we've had the opposite problem - I wanted Isaiah to stay on formula for as long as possible, he's more or less completely weaned himself off it. I wanted him to give up 1 bottle but he decided to flag all of them, in favour of cows milk.
To get him off the 1 bottle, I played with him hard out until he was just about ready for his nap, then gave him a cup of water, lay down with him and rubbed his legs/ back/ tummy/ preference of the day and talked quietly, then put him to bed as usual. It took a few days of going back in, giving him a kiss on the head and his dummy back, but we got there eventually.
For the cows milk thing, I get your logic completely (hence why I wanted to stick to formula). We only tried it because he was refusing his morning and bedtime bottles, so out of desperation one morning I gave him half a sippy cup of cows milk. Turns out he luuurrrvvvees it and now refuses formula.
Why oh why don't babies just play the game like they're supposed to? lol
Watch out for a recurrence of Postpartum Depression. Apparently, it can show up again at weaning. Chemically I would guess it is because of the lack of oxytocin circulating. I read an article about re-connecting with your significant other that suggests back rubs (and other rubs) to release some of this natural wonder drug.
I hope you get your boobs back. So far trying to get my baby to eat more food and drink less formula isn't working. And she may have issues with cow's milk. Boo.
Dude- did I mention that I have had a blocked milk duct for the past couple days? Be very careful about the weaning stuff... granted I cut Chase down to 2 feedings from 3 feedings about 2-3 weeks ago, it still happened and hurts like a B! The milk part we still struggle with as well. He did drink my Ovaltine milk out of MY cup the other day- but if it's meant for him? Forget it... It is such a process- 13 1/2 months and counting- oh my...
to help with engorgement as you lean use cabbage leaves stuffed into your sports bra.. basically I had to get my daughter to learn how to take the bottle first and then I gradually shifted.. I would say I would give up a feeding once every three days rather than a week. The engorgement was the worst part especially when I would feel too lazy at work to pump and then end up manually pushing the milk out in the bathroom after lunch because it hurt so much lol. good luck!
Argghhh!! This stinks for me! He has no plans to self wean at this time. Food pixie thank you for the reminder about ppd recurrence. Actually all these comments were very helpful to me,
B is almost 17 months and still nursing like a champ so I doubt we'll wean soon but I do have an idea. I started giving him non-mom milk in a sippy cup at meal times just to get him used to drinking something else so that one day maybe... Well he (eventually) took to it like a champ and will now take it from a sippy as an occasional substitute to nursing. Maybe try giving Ollie some cow's milk or toddler formula or whatever just as a "treat" first and get him to like it. He might get pissed and reject if it he associates it with being denied the boob, but maybe if he grows to like it first then he'll accept it? Just a thought! Good luck and hope you figure something out!
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