THE PROS AND CONS OF WEANING A TODDLER

This is my story, and I'm sticking to it. I guess.

Weaning my 2-year-old has been a roller coaster. When I thought he had weaned while I was pregnant, I was an emotional wreck. Then I had Little M and decided I wasn’t sure if I wanted to tandem nurse. I did tandem nurse for a while, but then I started to become irritable every time I nursed him. And he seemed to be asking out of half-hearted habit, not out of true desire. So I distracted him when he asked. And he was easily distracted. So he stopped nursing.

And then he started again, and then I decided to wean him for good.

Here’s why:

My First Mistake: Losing Confidence in Myself as a Parent

As Baby T turned 12 months old, then 13 months, 14 months… he was nursing like crazy. I never expected him to wean before he was two, and I didn’t want him to. He was still nursing like an infant. Long, sweet sessions in the morning and maybe one or two more times each day.

But around that time, I went to several La Leche League meetings and read a lot on Kellymom.com about setting limits on toddler nursing. A lot of people choose to stop nursing their toddler in public between 12 and 24 months. The reasoning I heard for this was essentially that at this age, they are learning limits about everything, so it’s not so developmentally abnormal to establish limits for breastfeeding, too.

Until about 19 months, I had nursed Baby T wherever and whenever. Public or not. But as Little M’s due date approached, I felt more and more that I needed to set limits for Baby T. I was reading a lot about tandem nursing, and a lot of the advice I got was to set limits. Many toddlers would nurse for only a few seconds—long enough to sing the ABCs or count to 10, for example. Other mamas only nursed before naps.

I decided I would try setting limits too. I don’t know why. There was no reason for me to do so, other than that’s what everyone else seemed to be doing. At that point, Baby T was mainly nursing in the mornings, but if he felt uncomfortable during the day, he would ask to nurse. If we were out, I would explain that we only have mommy’s milk at home.

I feel like that was my mistake. Baby T still wasn’t at a stage where I was setting many limits on anything. Setting limits on nursing felt like I was making it something that should be hidden. And I’m a big proponent of nursing in public. But I read too much. I sought advice from others when I should really have listened to myself.

And then there were Two

When Little M came into the picture, everything changed. All of a sudden, I just wanted to nurse my little newborn baby, but I felt so guilty for feeling that way. When Baby T was really sick during Little M’s first week in this world, that changed. I wanted to nurse Baby T. He needed the comfort, not to mention the health benefits.

But now I really didn’t want to nurse in public, only because tandem nursing pretty much exposed everything. I do have some boundaries. And giant stretch marks that I don’t really want everyone seeing.

It was easy at first, too. Little M slept all the time. In the mornings, I could leave Little M sleeping on the bed and nurse Baby T for as long as he wanted. And Baby T wasn’t the typical nursing toddler. He didn’t nurse often, but when he nursed, he would nurse like a baby. Twenty-minute marathon sessions, without getting distracted.

But I started to notice that he seemed to be asking to nurse out of habit. It would just slip from his mouth when I walked into his room in the morning. The same way you get so used to saying “I love you” when you hang up the phone with a family member that sometimes you’re nervous you’ll let it slip on a professional phone call or something.

That coincided with Little M sleeping less. So now he was waking up at the same time as Baby T and I was nursing him in bed. Big T was getting Baby T and playing with him until I came out. Nursing Baby T after that just felt like too much. I decided to try to distract Baby T in the mornings instead.

It worked pretty well. He probably complained a bit for a couple of days, but then he accepted that we weren’t nursing in the mornings anymore.

My Issue: Inconsistency

But he didn’t accept that we were never going to nurse again ever. He still asked sometimes. Especially while I was nursing Little M. And this is my problem (probably due to me reading too much, as usual). I’m so afraid of being inconsistent. I felt that since I was not nursing him in the mornings, it would be inconsistent to nurse him at other times of day. How do you explain to a toddler the difference between those nursing sessions?

I always go back to my friend who said nursing is like giving a hug: if a child needs that comfort, would you deny it at some times but not others?

That always got me, too. I felt like I had stopped nursing in the mornings exactly because he wasn’t nursing for comfort anymore. If I felt he wanted the comfort, I would still have nursed him.

Did I Wean Too Early?

But then again, what do I know about what my 2-year-old needs? Comfort and habit are one and the same in the mind of a toddler.

In the last six months, Baby T has been extremely needy. On top of getting a new brother and new teeth, he didn’t have the comfort of mommy’s milk anymore. He rarely asked for it, but he wanted to be held. All. The. Time.

I finally convinced myself that it was because I had weaned him too early. I really struggled with the guilt. And now the tantrums were beginning. I felt like it would be so much easier to calm him down if I could just nurse him once. They used to stop a tantrum in its tracks.

So I nursed him again. I read online about how many toddlers ask to nurse after they’ve weaned just to know they can, and then they lose interest.

Not Baby T. He nursed for longer than Little M, and all of a sudden he was asking for it all the time.

Breastfeeding Should Last as Long as Mutually Desired

I didn’t want to nurse Baby T all the time. I wanted to nurse him when he was throwing a major tantrum, but not when I was nursing Little M. Tandem nursing had begun to give me the creepy-crawly feeling of irritation that so many women talked about and I had never experienced until now.

I was so wishy-washy. I wanted to nurse him sometimes, and other times I wished he was weaned. A major part of the problem was that I felt like I couldn’t nurse him in public anymore. We had had so many conversations about how we only nurse at mommy and Baby T’s house that I felt like I would confuse him if I started nursing him elsewhere.

But what if he had a tantrum in public and demanded milk? How would I explain that I could comfort him with mommy’s milk at home but not in public? It felt hypocritical to me.

And that solidified my decision. For me, nursing had to be all or nothing. I had trouble explaining why limits were set, because I didn’t believe in the limits myself. I was imposing them because other people did. I was looking to others for how to parent because I wasn’t confident in my own decisions. That just led to me losing my instincts and wavering on my convictions.

But I guess on some level, I really did want to wean him. I don’t think I could have come to this decision if I still strongly felt like nursing him. I feel guilty for feeling that way. Just seven months ago, the thought of weaning brought me to hysterical tears. I do still feel like I took something away from him and gave it to his brother. I think I would still be nursing him if Little M wasn’t in the picture.

But when I look back and hear his voice in my head blurting out “mommy’s milk,” I still strongly feel that it was such a habit that he didn’t even know what he was asking for. And even when he asks to nurse now, he asks in a different way. “I want to eat mommy’s milk, please,” he says. Like he’s testing out his boundaries, his vocabulary, and his manners. Like he’s testing his limits, just like he does with everything else. And I can’t say yes sometimes and no sometimes. I don’t know why. I just don’t feel comfortable with that. So Baby T gets lots of snuggles and kisses and hugs. And he's just started to accept that laying his head on my chest gives him the same kind of comfort that nursing once did. But Baby T has weaned.

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