A mother describes her experience of gently weaning her toddler
Before becoming pregnant, I had never put much thought into whether I would breastfeed or not. During pregnancy, I thought I would try it but for no more than six months. Well, as the six months flew by, and then a year and another year, my daughter, Skye and I enjoyed an excellent breastfeeding journey. I absolutely did not want that journey to end on bad terms.
When Skye was two and a half years old, I became pregnant again and I decided that although I had read a lot about beautiful and successful tandem feeding stories, I wanted to start weaning Skye so that by the time the baby was born, I would only be breastfeeding one child.
The main difficulty though was that Skye showed absolutely no signs of being ready to stop breastfeeding, and in fact it was clearly something she enjoyed and treasured. I was dreading weaning.
About a month into the pregnancy, I told Skye that we could continue to breastfeed, but that it would stop “at one point”. I realised this is very vague for a toddler and I wondered if this actually made her more obsessed with breastfeeding as she knew there would be an end. However, she seemed to take it on board and every now and again she would ask if she could still breastfeed tonight and I would say of course! She started to touch my breasts a lot more often and it seems to give her comfort knowing that they are just “there”.
Then a month or so later, we went on holiday and I don’t know if it was the change in our routine but I asked my husband not to mention breastfeeding and instead at bed time we would all lie together in bed and he would tell a story without a book, just so she could close her eyes and drift off. After, I would tell and story and then we would all go to sleep (the intention being that the adults would then sneak out but that was not always the case). She would have both hands firmly on my breasts at this point but seemed to forget about feeding and drift off to sleep.
We were only away a week, but when we got home, we continued this routine and it seemed to work. A few weeks later, she would only request “drinking not just touching” about once every 4 days, and I always obliged so she knew she still had that option and did not feel like it had been taken away from her.
Gradually, she got to the stage where she would feed for about 5 seconds from each breast and I really think it was more to do with checking whether it was still available to her, rather than anything else. This was much better than I had hoped as she had always been very attached to breastfeeding and every time I thought of weaning against her will I felt sick. I don’t know if it was because we told her about the end that she started to process and accept it, or just the break with the holiday, or both, that did it, but it definitely helped.
Skye stopped breastfeeding around six months before the baby was born. She still shows a great interest in breastfeeding, and often breastfeeds her dolls or tells me that the baby is hungry and needs feeding immediately. I am so glad that we were table to have such a lovely journey together for two and a half years and that it ended so easily and naturally.
By Elsa - May 2022