Nursing Is Now A Thing Of The Past :(

 Baby K turned 15 months yesterday on July 12, 2012.  I can't believe she is such a big girl now!!  Time has flown and I don't know where the last couple years of my life have gone.  They just seem to be going by so quickly and I am afraid that I am missing out on a ton of stuff.  Even though I am a stay at home mom, some days it feels like I just don't get to spend enough time with my girls.  At the end of those types of days I always want to go and climb in bed with them just to get a little more time.  But I don't because they are always sleeping so peacefully and I would not want to disturb them just because Mommy is having a moment :)  And nursing Baby K has given me a few extra minutes each day with just her.


So I have been very slowly weaning Baby K since around the time she turned 13 months or so.  By the time she turned 1 she was really only nursing maybe at most 3-4 times a day.  Once when she woke up, once when she went to bed, and then usually at least once or twice during the day.  Around 13 months I cut her down to just in the morning and before bed.  She was such a distracted eater by this time that she really wasn't getting anything during the day anyway.  And please keep in mind that she was already doing some whole milk by the time she turned 1 so it was not like we were not giving her anything to drink :)

I was happy and content with nursing Baby K in the morning and before bed.  And I had no set time of when I was going to cut her off completely.  I personally did not see a reason why I needed to stop.  I was happy, she was happy, so who cared.  She probably wasn't getting much to begin with but I didn't have a plan for stopping. 

I never had to make the decision when A was a baby of when to stop nursing.  She had horrible reflux, always had to be supplemented with formula, I was working and was only allowed to pump 1 time a day.  So at 6 months I pumped one day and it didn't even fill the bottom of the bottles, so I was done.  Baby K has been a different story since I have always stayed home with her and things were really different.

My goal with Baby K was to make it past where I did with A.  At times I was not sure if I would make it to 1 year.  But then she turned 1 and I thought why do I have to stop just because she is 1 :)  So I continued.  But when I decided I was going to take A to see Beauty and the Beast at night and leave Hubby home to watch Baby K I had to do something.  She had never really gone to bed "nicely" without nursing.

So I decided the day before the show that I would not nurse her to bed that night.  She wasn't ecstatic about it but she wasn't totally distraught either.  So the morning of Beauty and The Beast I decided that I was still going to nurse her in the morning.  Why cut her off all together?  So from then on I decided that she would be nursed just in the morning.  There would never be a morning where I was not home to nurse her so what was the big deal :)

So for about the past week she would scream and cry when I brought her in the bedroom in the morning to nurse her.  She just wasn't happy about something.  But she would cry for about a minute or 2 and then she would latch on.  Nurse for about 5-10 minutes and be a super happy girl.  Well the screaming for no reason got old real quick :)  So I decided on the 11th that it would be the last morning that I would nurse my baby (tearing as typing :( ).  She was turning 15 months the next day and it seemed like she was done with and screaming was her way of telling me :(

So yesterday morning I went and got the girls up, took them both downstairs, got them their sippys of milk, and never heard a peep out of Baby K.  It seemed like that was what she wanted her mornings to be like.  It was the reaction that you would want from your baby when it is time to wean.  But at the same time not really what I wanted.  

I am not ready for her to not be my baby anymore and nursing was the last baby thing that I had with her.  They grow up so fast that I wanted to hold on to her as long as I could.  But they do have to grow up sometime.  A is well beyond her years, even at 3, and I don't want to hold Baby K back just because she is the baby.  I definitely notice differences in the two of them.  Yes I know each child is different but I also notice that I treat Baby K more like a baby than I ever did with A.       

So here we are now at FULL day 2 with no nursing and Baby K has not tried to nurse once.  There has been no pulling on my shirts, no bang on my chest, NOTHING.  I guess it is a good thing but I am having a hard time with it :(  Luckily she is still a cuddle baby so it has made it a little easier.  She still loves to lay with me and climb all over me and that has not changed :)  My biggest fear with the whole thing was that she was no longer going to need ME for anything.  That all I was good for was a little shot of milk in the morning to start her day.  But that really isn't true :)