Q&A: weaning a toddler

Michelle writes:

"So how am I ever going to stop breastfeeding? My daughter just turned one. In an ideal world, I'd let her until she was ready to stop. I certainly don't want to cause her any emotional harm -- she LOVES to nurse. But there are a couple of issues that make my world less than ideal.

Issue #1: We'd like another baby. I am 40 and moderately infertile. IVF worked well for us, but I assume she'll need to be weaned before we can start the process again. Clock is ticking.

Issue #2: She won't take a bottle and I am tired tired tired of being the only one who can care for he for more than a few hours at a time. I need a real break. She's in daycare 3x a week. She'll drink a few sips, once in a while as much as an ounce, from a sippy cup while there. I visit at lunchtime to nurse.

What we have been doing is trying to drop feedings gradually. She is down to a noon-ish feeding, a before-bed feeding and 2 feedings during the night (usually but not always 2 am and 5 am). She had been nursing 3-4 times during the day and 3-4 times at night up until about 2 months ago.

I am at my wits end trying to get her to drop the night feedings. The problem is that she really is hungry. If we let her FIO when she wakes (or rock her, walk her, etc), she'll go back to sleep but wake again in 15-20 minutes. And will repeat this for hours. I have tried to get her to feed later each night, ie FIO until 2:30 one night, then 3 the next, etc. hoping to gradually stretch this. What happens is that there is no regular pattern, she'll start waking up 12:30 or 1 for a couple of nights.

Any ideas? Its been a year since I've had a full night sleep. Am I crazy to want another baby when this one is giving me such a hard time?"

I think that you're correct in thinking that you'll have to wean before you do IVF again, depending on what your protocol is. There doesn't seem to be any evidence that some fertility meds (like Follistim or Gonal-F) cause any problems in breastfed babies, but they also haven't been tested. It sounds like other meds (Lupron, for example) are also untested but probably bad news. Better not to use your daughter as a guinea pig.

It sounds like your problem is that she's still getting a huge part of her calorie intake from nursing. This is completely normal and developmentally appropriate for her age, although it's not what you need at this point. IME, most kids experience a shift in the balance of breastmilk or formula vs. food in the period from 12-15 months. Once your daughter hits that shift it'll probably be easier to wean because she'll just be consuming more food in general and less milk.

I think your overall strategy should be the same thing you're probably doing all day long with her anyway--distraction. If you can distract her from nursing with other fun things to consume, she won't miss the nursing and it won't be hard on her.

What does she drink out of the sippy? Breastmilk? Cow's milk? Soy or rice milk? She may be pissed about drinking breastmilk in an "inferior container" (my dad's joke from the 70s--har har), but would drink other beverages more willingly. You might also try switching to a straw cup if the caregivers allow it, because it's an easier motion and might be more of a novelty for her.

It sounds like you might have better luck getting her to drop the noontime feeding first. I'm assuming you'll still drop in to daycare to see her at noon (unless you could get your husband to do it for you instead for a week or two, which would be the perfect way to break the nursing at noon habit), so you might have to create some new ritual to do with her then instead of nursing. I'm too lazy to think of anything to substitute that doesn't involve French fries. If any readers have any ideas, please put them in the comments.

Once she's willing to eat more within the next few months, I'd see if you could really stuff her with food at dinner. Then if she nurses at bedtime that'll top her off and she might end up dropping a feeding at night, or delaying the next feeding so she goes down from 2 middle-of-the-night feedings to just 1. You could also have your husband take a nighttime shift and offer her some easily-eaten food (like banana or oatmeal or yogurt) in the middle of the night instead of breastmilk. That would fill her tummy, but also eliminate a feeding (or two, if the food fills her up enough that she sleeps through until morning). Eventually she'll start sleeping longer stretches anyway, but this will help take you out of the loop before that happens.

This is one of those things that's just a logistical nightmare and resembles a logic puzzle from the LSATs. The annoying thing is that if you had the time you could just let it work itself out (which it would), but you don't have the time so you have to tax your brain with methods to outfox a 12-month-old's stomach. Yeesh. File that under Things You Don't Need.

Anyway, you're not crazy to want another child. Having two is not easy. Not easy at all. But it's waaaay easier than having one but wanting two. And the part that makes you want to lock yourself in the closet with a pint of Ben & Jerry's is over in a few years*, but you have two wonderful children for the rest of your life. And they have each other.

I hope some of this helps you, she weans within the next few months, your next IVF works easily, and you have an easy delivery and a healthy baby.

* I hear.

 

Comments

[Linda]

I am going to whisper this so that I am not attacked:

I put strawberry powder in my kids' milk to get them to drink from a sippy. It didn't take long for them to prefer that. It's just a little, about 1/2 teaspoon per 8 oz of milk, but it's enough to make it worth their while.

[Moxie]

I may have to delete your comment, Linda, because it's clear that you're an unfit parent. What kind of person puts in strawberry powder when she could put in chocolate?? Why do you hate freedom?

[Katie]

As a mom of a three year old who spend the lunch hour every day picking up said three year old from morning preschool to take her to the sitters to be with her baby brother (where he too nurses) I applaud you in taking your lunch hour to nurse your daughter. I strongly dislike not having the hour to get things done (errands, library, start some laundry, time myself with NO NOISE) so I'm sure having the lunch hour free would be a plus.
Have you tried cow's milk or the other suggestions Moxie gave? You might find she likes them. Having your husband step in when you would normally nurse could help break the I-see-mommy-means-I-get-to-nurse association.

Linda if it works yell it from the roof tops.

[Linda]

It's not that I hate freedom, Moxie. It's that I hate freedom SO MUCH.

[Lisa C.]

I truly believe that kids have certain "windows of opportunity" where they'll accept certain changes in their routing with aplomb rather than screaming.

My son is now sleeping through the night (11 pm - 7 am generally) without waking up for a bottle. About a week and a half ago he had a stomach bug so I gave him tea instead of milk in his bottle. The result was the he woke up hungry and actually ate breakfast, a snack, and lunch which before that day he had NEVER done. After I left for work he also ate dinner and only took 4 oz of milk to get to sleep, then slept through and accepted tea again when he woke up around 6:30 AM. I really try to make sure he gets a good breakfast in and it seems to set him up to actually EAT for the rest of the day. Gradually he's been sleeping longer and longer, and all of this has been accomplished with NO CRYING. I believe it's because we're in one of those magic windows of opportunity where he was ready to give it up and just needed a little nudge.

He's 2.5, but the reason I typed all of that out is because I think we missed a window of opportunity when he was between 12 and 18 months where we could have successfully night weaned him. I saw that he was voluntarily giving up the bottle during that time, but I was working nights and my husband didn't want to wean him. We tried unsuccessfully to wean him a few times between 18 and 30 months, all of which were resisted noisily. Then bang, at 32 months he pretty much did it himself.

So my advice is to continue on the weaning program a slowly as possible and the capitalize on a window of opportunity if one presents itself. Keep an eye out for her accepting substitutes without crying, being able to be distracted, then jump on the weaning plan full force.

[Heidi]

Michelle, with the altering of a few details, your letter could have been the one I was just about to write to Moxie myself. I would be very interested in hearing more, as time goes on, about your struggles and successes. I know that for me a large part of the sense of panic comes from the extremely limited amount of time to work with in achieving another pregnancy. In my case, it's going to be a frozen embryo transfer. Because of breastfeeding, I haven't had my period yet, and my RE tells me I have to have 3 regular periods before we can move ahead. I'm 43. I just don't think I have time to play around with really, really gradual weaning. Though I love breastfeeding and would be happy to keep going as long as my son wanted it, in the long run, I think he'll be better off with a sibling (I hope) than with an extended opportunity to breastfeed.

I don't have any advice to offer, since I'm in the same boat, but I would like to ask if anyone could be more specific about what methods of giving liquids have worked for them. I've introduced, and he's taken, some regular milk, but the only way he'll take it is in a regular open cup that I'm holding. He doesn't have anywhere near the motor control to use the cup himself. Sippy cups and straw cups aren't working; he can't seem to get the hang of drinking from them and usually just throws them over the side of the high chair. Am I going to have to hold a cup for him every time he drinks? I'm not looking forward to doing this in the middle of the night, since he usually is only half awake anyway when he gets up at night, and I don't want to wake him up further.

[MoMo]

I'm trying to wean for the same reason - so I can start thinking about trying to have another baby. We've gotten down to nursing just two or three times a day, but my son doesn't seem to want any part of giving those up. I no longer nurse him at night when he wakes up, but that's been making night time much less fun around here. I try instead to sit with him, rock him, anything but nurse him. The good news is that after about 4-6 weeks, he no longer expects to be nursed back to sleep. The bad news is that we haven't had any luck giving up nursing before naptime and bedtime.

It seems that most people have more luck weaning once their children drink out of the sippy/straw cup, but I haven't really had that experience. My son loves his sippy cup; he'll drink 5 cups of water a day if I let him. But he knows it's not a substitute for nursing so I don't know what to offer him as an alternative to nursing. I think that my son basically just really loves nursing - it calms him and soothes him - so I feel so relectant to take that away from him. But then there is that whole wanting another baby thing...

[Lynn]

When my son was 14 months old, and I was trying to wean him, he seemed to eat enough solids, but I had a problem encouraging him to drink more liquids. What worked best for me was to give him his sippy cup in the car, or while he was watching his favorite video. It seemed that if he was sitting with a sippy cup in his hand he'd eventually drink it, especially if he was distracted by something. But if he was in his highchair he just wanted to be done so he could get down, and if he was playing, he just wanted to play.

He also didn't like the taste of cow's milk, so at first I'd mainly give him diluted juice to drink, and get him his milk proteins from yobaby yogurt, which he loved. Then we discovered Stonyfields Farms drinkable yogurt, so for a while I'd mix a dash of it with milk in his sippy cup, and he'd drink that willingly. We called it "yogurt milk."

Finally, for extra liquids I tried to feed him lots of juicy fruit. He loved oranges or tangarines, strawberries, apples, pineapple...

If it's snuggle time he wanted, I'd offer to read books on my lap instead of nursing. Lots of books.

[Moxie]

Heidi, will he take milk from a bottle? If it works, stick with it. I think the idea that kids have to be off the bottle at 12 months makes no sense, and if it helps you wean, go for it. You could also try the Nuby cup (I got mine at KMart, down at the bottom of the sippy cups as if no one wants them). I'm blanking out right now on other kinds of cups but I know there are a few out there.

Babies who won't take cow's milk (even with chocolate or, eew, strawberry powder) will often take fortified soy or rice milk. And if you can get them to eat yogurt or other things with calcium, it doesn't matter if they drink milk or a milk substitute at all.

[Linda]

HEY! I don't appreciate the anti-strawberry powder comments. Obviously, you're just so ethnocentric in your thinking that you can't FATHOM someone not wanting to be part of your chocolate milk group. GET OVER YOURSELF.

Also, why do you hate freedom so much?

[Heidi]

Thanks for the suggestions, Moxie. Today, I got one of the Nuby cups you recommended, and even though he mostly did a lot of playing with the nipple/spout, I could tell he was at least getting some milk. We'll just have to keep on practicing.

Actually, we never used a bottle enough for him to become very skilled at or attached to it--which is why I'm moving right to the sippy cup, and perhaps one of the reasons why he's having problems with it. I can't believe things worked out this way, since it wasn't what I imagined before The Boy was born, but in the first year of his life, with one exception, I've never been away from him for more than three hours or so. So no real need for the bottle. (Though I will say that, in retrospect, the whole "I'll get up with the baby at night and exist in a sleep-deprived haze so YOU [partner], who do very important work outside of the home all day, can get your much needed sleep" is a crock of bullsh@*. Things will be very different the next time around, if there is a next time.)

But that is another issue, and I thank you so much for your comments on this one.