Recently I got in my head that little man is a year old and I should probably wean him. I had read about this once upon a time - but not recently. He was already down to about two feeds a day anyway. Of course, last week, when he was sick, I fed him four times a day. In my brilliance I decided that right after he started feeling better I should go cold turkey! What a fool! Feeding him four times a day for two days of course increased my milk supply and then I was in pain and huge. I decided I should probably read up on this again so I pulled out my copy of "So That's What They're For". I glanced over the section and found key phrases like "don't go cold turkey", "consider why you are stopping" and "breast infection". So, I decided to reassess my strategy.
So now I am going to move to one feeding a day. Lots of people talk about their children having a favorite feeding. Well, little man doesn't care about the day feedings and the two days we went cold turkey he didn't miss the bedtime feeding. The only one he seems to care about is the 3:30 - 4:30 am feeding that I started before summer camp this summer. We tried to break this habit on Saturday morning - 2 and 1/2 hours he was up and MAD. Finally, we fed him - with a sippy and milk - and he went back to sleep. So, I guess this is my next issue - how can we get him away from getting up so early in the morning? The Baby Whisperer talks about accidental parenting and I think I have fallen into a bad pattern here.
2 comments:
Sounds like he is really hungry not just nursing for reasssurance. I would try feeding him a little something before bedtime, our lactation nurse suggested something dairy based like yogurt or cheese as these take longer to digest. And remember that as he goes out into the world and gets more colds if you are still nursing him he gets your immunities to boost his developing system. Immune systems don't mature until kids are 10 years old. Even nursing once a day is beneficial.
And one more thing-if you have a history of breast cancer in your family, nursing for two years has shown to reduce your chances of getting breast cancer by 50%.
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