Breastfeeding is very personal and can often be complicated for new moms. Although it may be natural, that doesn’t mean that it is easy. I have been breastfeeding one child or another for more than six years. I’m proud to have been able to sustain this practice for as long as I have, but I have had conflicting emotions about it throughout the entire time. It can be a great time for bonding with your baby, whether they’re very young or a toddler, but it can also be painful and exhausting.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I knew that I would breastfeed.
She latched pretty much right away, but there were some difficult times as we went through the process. We pushed through cracked nipples and sought out professional help and special creams. She breastfed until I cut her off at age 2 1/2 when I was seven months pregnant with her little brother.
By that point, I couldn’t handle being touched anymore, and she weaned pretty easily.
I was getting too big and too uncomfortable for her to continue. When you’re breastfeeding a toddler, things are just different too. They squirm around more, and you can tire out quickly.
Those things, combined with my pregnancy, made me decide to be done. I had just a two-month break before my second child was born.
When my son was born, breastfeeding came pretty naturally.
I hadn’t been off of it for long. It was somehow sweeter and easier with a little baby than with a toddler. Although I had a couple of instances where I was sore, we didn’t seem to have nearly as much trouble as I did the first time around.
The biggest problem was the sheer amount of time he wanted to feed. His feedings seemed longer, but I was still pretty comfortable with them, but then he got older too.
This time around, there’s no additional pregnancy or baby to quit for.
The motivation to cut him off comes and goes, but it isn’t as urgent as when I was pregnant. He’s now 3 years old, and I still see no end in sight. I’ve heard of kids who will wean themselves, but I really don’t know that he’s going to do that. It is so ingrained in him.
I have conflicting emotions about the entire weaning process.
I honestly don’t know how to do this. He sleeps so easily with it that most of the time, I just want to sleep too. Sometimes I resent it, but we’ve been doing this so long that it still comes naturally.
There are people that make me feel like he should be weaned already, and I go in spurts of trying to please them, which really seems ridiculous. I’m letting the pressure get put on me by people who aren’t even really involved. It’s up to my son and me. That’s it.
When I think about weaning him, sometimes I get a huge emotional response and start crying.
It could be because he’s my last baby. It could be because I’m sad that he’s growing up. I think what lies at the heart of it, though, is that when he was born, some of the closeness I had with my daughter seemed to disappear.
I had to focus on the baby, and even though he’s older now, he and I have a closeness that I’m terrified of losing because I know it’s coming that he won’t be so reliant on me anymore.
This huge emotional response seems to be more related to that than to the actual act of breastfeeding.
I know he’s going to wean at some point. He’s not going to be little forever, and he will mature enough to see that. Until then, I’ll navigate this journey as best I can, even if it doesn’t line up with how others think it should.
