Is it possible...
Is it possible to wean a two and a half year old co-sleeping boy? I'm a single mama so there would be no handing him off to his dad for the night, which is the only thing I've heard that seems to work.
I can't take it! He only breastfeeds at night, but it is ALL NIGHT. When I say no, he cries and wakes totally up and then we're both awake for hours. It is so much easier to just give him the boob and go back to sleep.
One night last month he had surgery the next day so no eating or drinking after midnight. When I told him no booboo's (what he calls it) I had to walk him around the house for an hour before he stopped crying out of pure pissed-ness. I sure don't want to do that every night.
My older son weaned on his own at just over a year, so I had no idea this would happen.
Have any of you done it? Give me some hope here.
but i am watching this thread. nia is exactly like this. she gets HELLA pissed when i say no nurse at night.
i am really sick of it too.
help us, mamas!
"we seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways." ~ Marge Piercy
i've managed to cut it back quite a bit over the past two months. i still nurse ruby to just about asleep, but whenever she wakes during the night, it's a struggle. and she wakes every night, two or three times. uuggh. i just keep telling her "no babas, the babas are sleeping" and it can take anywhere from 2 min to an hour for her to go back down, and usually requires me massaging her legs or stroking her head. i always have a sippy cup with water to offer her if she is thirsty, and sometimes that's enough to settle her down. i often sleep chest down or my back to her so my boobs aren't in her face, but sometimes she'll start trying to latch on to my shoulder blades or crawl over me to get to them. some nights she kicks and screams, others she just gets it and settles down without a fight. lately she sleeps solidly from around midnigt until 7ish, and then i let her have the babas. she latches on and does not let go for almost an hour. but even that one is starting to wear on me!
*edit to add* one tip a friend passed on to me is to not disrupt the "sleeping zone." don't get out of bed at all, don't turn on the lights, don't pick them up and walk them around the house, just keep lying down next to them as if to show them that this is how we sleep from now on. this has helped us greatly.
was a single mama. When she weaned her son, she put bandaids over her nipples and told him that they were broken. He got a kick out of it, and left them alone. Everytime he would lift up her shirt, there would be the bandaids.
"I am not dead yet! I can still call forth a piece of soul and set it down in color, fixed forever." Keri Hulme
"Fundamentally the markswoman aims at herself" DT Suzuki
I used the band-aid trick about 6 weeks ago. Worked like a charm. I do, however, have a partner that took over the nightime parenting a while back, so she had been night-weaned for about 5 months before weaning altogether. We argued about me being deceitful, saying my breasts were broken, but I really do think it was less emotionally traumatic for all parties. Can you guys go out and buy him a 'special cup' for 'big boy milk' to drink at night? We did that, too, and yeah, I gave her chocolate milk more than I'd like to admit.
There is a section about times in the seasons that are best to wean. I had a good friend who weaned successfully that way. Who knew. The stars were in alignment.
i've been back and forth on nightweaning, and though i have a partner, he's out of town a lot, so i can so understand how much more challenging it is without that support. that said, i have forged ahead even absent that help.
i've explained that there's no "mamajuice" {dd's word for nursing} between when mama goes to bed and 7:00 a.m. i've explained that mama needs to sleep and can't sleep while dd is having mamajuice. i've shown her the clock {not that i think she reads numbers yet, but it makes me feel less arbitrary for some inexplicable reason}.
we've had nights where she screams and thrashes, and i feel like complete shit. we've had nights where she repeats, "mamajuice?" plaintively until she falls back asleep, which also breaks my heart, but doesn't make me feel quite so terrible. we've had nights when my partner is home where i take her in to him {he doesn't co-sleep with us}; she has some juice, settles down, says she's ready to lay back down, and when she does, she goes back to sleep. we've had mornings where she's woken up at six a.m., screamed and thrashed, finally listened to my explanations, drowsed until after seven, and then nursed. {of course, once she starts nursing in the morning, she'll keep going for an hour and better if i let her, but that's a hurdle for another time.} i'm looking forward to nights when she just sleeps through until _after_ 7:00 a.m.
so, i don't know if that offers anything but empathy, but there ya go. here's hoping we both get to sleep for 6 or seven hours in a row sometime soon, eh?
"if i pass for other than what i am/do you feel safer?" ~lani ka'ahumanu
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"dragon knows dragon
"if i pass for other than what i am, do you feel safer?" ~ lani ka'ahumanu
dragon knows dragon
yeah, I've stopped the night feeding for a while now. I just say quietly that she can have milk in the morning. She calls it "miwk" or "mamajuice" sometimes. At first she was always totally thrashing, rejecting being held, hysterical for the milk. I would hold her tight and walk around, swaying her from side to side in a rhythm. i've read that if you can't get through to your child with your words, you can lull them by setting off their balance in their inner ear by swinging them rhythmically from side to side. (like sway with each step, regular steps, not any kind of disturbing motion).
Eventually she'd bury her head in my neck and accept the comfort without the milk. Sometimes I would need to put her in her crib to cry by herself for a couple minutes while I left the room to recenter, and give her a chance to miss me. Then when I would come back, she would relax a little more in her gladness to see me again. Like it would shift the focus from 'I want boobies since I'm awake' to 'I want Mommy since she went away'. And literally two minutes is enough, especially if you're not a CIO person at all.
I find that consistency and a calm reassuring presence helps get her back to sleep without milk; being extremely quiet, holding her hand firmly without moving a muscle to disturb her, sometimes even breathing exageratedly like I'm asleep (slow deep breaths). She senses me as settled, so she wants to join me in my state, knowing that I'm not going anywhere or going to do anything surprising.
Hope some of that helps. You might also try singing the full repertoire of baby songs you know (twinkle, mary/lamb/ ants marching/etc), he might lose interest in his own crying just to hear your singing, and then be lulled to sleep by it. This was the big transition I used to get dd down to sleep during her day nap with no milk (the second phase of weaning, after the night weaning).
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