Nursing A Toddler Carnival
May
01
My Friend Heather is having a carnival today that she is calling “This Is What A Nursing Toddler Looks Like”. While I don’t have pictures of me nursing, I thought I would share my experience with nursing toddlers and why I do.
When I was pregnant with my first, Sariah, I decided that I wanted to nurse for 18 months. I read a lot about breastfeeding because my mom never nursed us kids so it wasn’t something I could turn to her for advice and I was determined to succeed. The one thing I read over and over again was to nurse as soon as possible after birth. Well Sariah didn’t want to nurse until she was about 5 hours old. It was a tough 6 weeks becoming comfortable and creating a good nursing bond with her but after those 6 weeks things became a whole lot easier. Some people take Anoretix to loose weight but I nursed to loose weight. 2 months later I had lost all my pregnancy weight! Nursing didn’t quite work as well for the second time around though, and I know some women who don’t loose any weight until after their babies are weaned.
When Sariah was 7 months old I felt like I wasn’t able to nurse her as often as she wanted and a few days later I found out I was pregnant. So I began to feed her solids in addition to nursing her. I did not feel courageous enough to Tandem nurse so at 14.5 months – 6 weeks before Rebekah was born, Sariah was weaned. I still feel bad for not letting her self wean but once Rebekah was born, she was very concerned about her baby sister and wanted me to hold the baby all the time.
When Rebekah was born I decided again that I would nurse until 18 months and later on until 12 months. When I gave Rebekah her first cup of cows milk on her first birthday she loved it. She quickly learned that this was a substitute for mommy’s milk and lost interest in the cows milk and wanted to nurse more often. I shortly changed my outlook on nursing and decided not to have an age set when I would wean and just help the child self wean. Rebekah at 21 months now usually only nurses once a day – somewhere between 3am and 5am when she climbs into bed with JJ and I.
I often get looks of surprised when people learn that Rebekah still nurses but I wouldn’t change it. I believe that helping a child to self wean gives me the opportunity to help my child make choices. We are deciding together when to stop nursing it is not just me telling her, it’s time to stop, here is your cup of milk.
I don’t know if Heather will post the links for all the blogs that participate today or tomorrow but check out her blog to read the other posts and if you want to join send her a link to your post by the end of the day today. Her email is on her blog.
May 1st, 2009 at 9:58 am
have something for you over at my blog
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May 3rd, 2009 at 10:54 am
Way to go Mommy!!! Your strong devotion is admirable!…
I wanted to breastfeed my boys as long as they wanted…but that was when I was NOT EVEN MARRIED YET… but when they were born, my work required me to be away for (at least) 12hours a day… I gave up…*sigh*
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May 5th, 2009 at 8:29 am
[...] Like Carnival last week but I was actually supposed to post it today. You can read the post on why I nurse my toddlers if you would like. But today I will post a cute picture and tell a cute [...]