Day 12 of mother-encouraged weaning

Well, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm weaning the girls. While we are making progress (I think), it's mostly at bedtime - and they are nursing more at other times to make up for it, so they don't actually nurse less. The advantage is that bedtime is the hardest time to distract the girls from nursing, so if they quit nursing at bedtime I just need to focus on distracting them from nursing during the afternoon to go nursing-free. Now we are offering them a choice of pacifiers, or milk right before bed - seems to be working, although we'll have to wean from the pacifiers later.

I think once they are routinely skipping the bedtime nursing, I'll probably try to have them skip nursing all day one day a week, then two the next week, then three days, and so on until they are just nursing on weekends.

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Some neat things the girls have started doing:

Lenora is learning her colors. I thought she might be starting to grasp them about a month ago, so Bjorn and I have been working with her (and a little with Iliana, but she doesn't seem to get colors as well). She now recognizes purple easily, and requests purple items and orange items specifically. She is starting to get green, and yellow and will occasionally recognize red or blue correctly.

Iliana, on the other hand, is practicing another skill: Asking, "Why?" This one blind-sided me. I simply wasn't prepared to have to start justifying our rules to our children quite this early. The first time she clearly asked it, she wanted to know why she shouldn't go downstairs after her bath. I fumbled out something about how it was inconvenient to have her downstairs while we're upstairs and how we were busy trying to get pajamas and diapers on her. I needn't have bothered working at it so hard - she was more interested in getting any explanation at all. She looked so pleased with herself by the time I was done talking!

Lenora has started singing her "AFB's" - that is, the Alphabet Song, but a bit tuneless and with random letters that she likes alternating with F. "A, F, B, F, Y, F, A . . . " Iliana isn't as good, but does sing her "UBU's" - mostly just alternating between U and B, and with absolutely no tune at all.

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And the big anecdote . .. We were watching an episode of Full House from the season with the twin boys. In this episode, Jess has to punish his toddlers, and during their time-out they call him "mean Daddy." Ouch. I joke to Bjorn that if we're not careful, Lenora will pick up on that and start saying it. About two minutes later, she does just that - "Mean Daddy!" and laughs.

But it gets better . . . when I start encouraging her to say "Nice Daddy" instead, she first repeats herself for a bit - then starts saying "Nice Mommy". If she weren't a toddler, you'd think I'd have set this up ahead of time and bribed her.

And a little more . .. we finally get her to say "Nice Daddy," so in the interest of equal treatment (or something), she spontaneously decides to also throw in "Mommy bad."

Definitely a story worth writing down and saving for when she gets older.

Day 1 of mother-encouraged weaning

I just put my girls to bed without nursing for the first time in 3 or 4 months. Even though I came home 90 minutes before bed, and even though I was interacting closely with them most of that time, they still accepted my discouragement of nursing. First DH helped me distract them with dinner, and they accepted my refusal to nurse in exchange for extra cheese and frozen teething toys. Then when they started asking for milk again we moved to baths, and they were happy with that. Then stories and pajamas and one more story, and then Iliana climbed into bed without being asked - so I finished reading Lenora the story quickly, tucked them in, and started giving out kisses.

Finally Iliana realized she wanted milk and started to cry. We told her firmly but kindly that it was too late and we were going night-night, and then turned the light out and left. We know from experience that any attempts to calm and soothe this late in the bedtime routine usually backfire, as the other child gets upset and confused by the change. Iliana wasn't happy about it, but she didn't melt down either and quit complaining as soon as we left the room - and moved on to playing with her sister, rather cheerfully.

Lenora is actually still awake, almost an hour later, talking to herself quietly. They've been doing this at bedtime lately - playing, chatting, singing, and occasionally running around the room after we put them to bed and walk out. It's very cute, and the thing that really impresses me is that they will put themselves back to bed without any fuss when they get tired, with no help from us.

And now . . . silence. Wow.

"Family-led" weaning

I had originally planned on getting as close to child-led weaning as a working mother possibly can. However, I gave that up before a year as night-wakings for nursing were hurting my abilty to work during the day. I opted to night-wean just after a year, after pump-weaning at 11.5 months. Since then, I have allowed my children to nurse roughly on-demand during the waking hours of the day when I am home.

Now I am finding that nursing so much is starting to chafe. Right now, almost all of my precious time with my children is spent nursing. I think complete but gradual weaning is the solution that will be the easiest on everybody, so I am moving to "mother-encouraged" weaning: Gentle weaning mainly accomplished through distractions that doesn't push the child very hard. I'm doing this now because the girls are in a less-clingy phase, and I suspect that if I don't wean in the next month or two then we'll be in a clingy phase again. Then I'll have to wait 3 or 4 months longer to have such an easy chance to wean again. I don't really want to nurse that much longer.

I've been nursing my twins now for 21 months, and think "extended" nursing should be considered normal and weaning before 14 months should be considered "early weaning". This isn't to say that there is anything wrong with weaning before 14 months - I do believe that there can be excellent reasons to wean early. However, I think that later weaning and child-led weaning should be more common and would love to see them normalized.

At the same time, I find the "all or nothing" attitude that some radical lactivists express towards weaning to be off-putting. I don't think child-led weaning is always the right decision for a family. I think of the style of weaning used in my family as "family-led" weaning: Every one gets to have their opinion heard, and the best choice for the entire family is selected. There is no pressure on Mom to keep nursing no matter what. The only pressure is to keep nursing as long as the reasons to continue outweigh the reasons to quit.