Weaning - The Great Seperation

As you might remember we decided to go ahead and wean Eb before Evie comes along, hoping to make the transition simpler and because I don't think I'm ready to tandem nurse (at least not with the changes of going from one to two littles, maybe further down the road).  This is such a bittersweet thing for me.  I love nursing Eb.  I love the one on one snuggle opportunities, the dependency, my ability to directly provide for his needs, the continued health benefits... I'm rambling.  So losing all of that is the bitter.  The sweet is him learning to accept more comfort from Chris, not needing to be the only one who can put him to sleep (since that's really the only time he nursed) and this being one more step of him growing up.  Mostly for my own memory I wanted to document what we did and how it worked, maybe you can find something helpful along the way too!

DISCLAIMER!

As this is mainly for my own documentation their may be parts you find too informative about me (TMI is the phrase my siblings love!).  Feel free to skip this post if you're concerned, I won't tell ;) If you do proceed don't say I didn't warn ya'!

Sleeping with snuggly puppy...

Before we actually started cutting nursing sessions Chris made the great suggestion of introducing alternative comfort sources so he had a chance to get used to them and maybe even associate them with the comfort of nursing.  We took the shotgun approach and introduced several hoping one would stick.  We gave him a snuggly puppy, started playing music in addition to the already established singing (thinking this would be good when it came time to go straight to bed without rocking) and a few sleepy books (Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and Time For Bed are the most popular right now, unfortunately his other favorite - The Big Red Barn - is missing).

We let him get used to these for almost two weeks then employed the more unorthodox part of the plan, the moon signs.  Bear with me here!  My parents, grandparents and Great grandparents (maybe further back, I don't know) have always weaned cattle by the signs.  Granddaddy swears that it makes a huge difference on the stress of Momma and baby.  When he weans in the right sign it doesn't seem to phase them much, but in the wrong sign both cow and calf bawl for days and often both lose weight.  Yes, I know I keep using cow analogies.  Yes, I know I'm not a cow.  But the crossovers can sometimes apply!  We thought it worth a try anyway and scheduled to cut out his afternoon nursing while the signs was below the knees.

He did great!  He already slept well for that nap and is usually good and tired so it was an ideal one to start with.  He was sad at first but didn't fuss long, almost every time the first week he would ask for milk but seemed fine with the response of 'later'.  After about three weeks we cut out morning nap nursing, again he was kind of sad but still did great.  

We were going to wait a couple weeks before cutting early morning or bed time, but after only a week of not doing morning nap I starting having rather severe cramps and contractions during his early morning nurse.  Not wanting that to happen again we decided to cut the remaining nursings that day (May 6th).  Fortunately it was the last day in the feet (signs again), and he was a trooper!

So he seemed to transition well, the next concern was me!  A lot of Moms struggle with mastitis when weaning, which is another reason we tried to wean gradually rather than stop cold turkey - I did NOT want mastitis again!  After some quick research I found suggestions of avoiding hot showers/stimulation, binding (or just and snug sports bra) and cabbage leaves. Cabbage leaves!?!  I don't know why they work but they were everywhere and supposed to help your milk finish drying up.  Even our OB recommended them.  And yes, you wear them just like you imagine, like you lost your coconuts at the loua and had to sub with cabbage!  Whether we stopped slowly enough, I just wasn't making much milk, or the cabbage leaves worked their magic, everything went very smoothly.  Only a little itchy and tender, but no other issues.

I think I only used the cabbage leaves for five days or so and kept them on all the time.

Here we are almost a month later and still doing good.  Eb still asks on occasion, but seems content with the 'not right now' answer and the alternative suggestion of snuggles.  I only hope it can go this smoothly with every baby!