My son Jacob is 2 1/2 years old now, and we are still breastfeeding. But slowly, slowly, I am feeling more and more ready to be done. And watching my son, I think that he is slowly becoming more ready to wean. He still likes breastfeeding rather a lot, but he asks to nurse less and less all the time, and he is more and more willing to accept alternatives, like a drink of water or a cuddle. I can tell that my milk supply has fallen off a lot, and I’m sure he can, too.

I see weaning as a journey, not necessarily a destination. With my firstborn, Hannah, it was a process of gradually letting go. I remember the last time we nursed, and I did encourage the weaning, but it took place over many months. Or, probably, over a couple of years. From the time that she took her first bite of solid food until that December night when she was 34 months old, we were on the path away from breastfeeding. It had twists and turns, and we moved forwards and backwards, and in the end it was all very anti-climactic.

Now, I have another child, and I find myself in the same place I found myself with Hannah. I don’t enjoy breastfeeding all that much anymore. I’ve watched mother cats wean kittens, and I imagine that they feel something like I do. When my child has been nursing for a while I feel a sort of a skin-crawling, get-this-kid-off-me sort of a feeling. I wonder if all mammals experience this at some point. I don’t know. I do know that it’s possible to work around it by setting limits and working with a child, and it doesn’t have to mean the end of breastfeeding. But I also know that it makes me much less accommodating when my kid asks to nurse.

Because I am feeling increasingly ready to be done, and because I think my toddler is reaching a point where he’s more ready to wean, I’m taking active steps to encourage it. What that looks like right now is to stop breastfeeding Jacob when he wakes up at night, and to stop using breastfeeding as a tool to help me get through my day. I’m night-weaning, and I’m dropping the feedings that are more about me having a quiet toddler than about meeting Jacob’s need for comfort.

This is how I find myself, at 1:00am, trotting down the hall for drinks of water, and rubbing Jacob’s back to get him back to sleep. It’s how I find myself getting up and moving around when my kid sees me sitting and starts walking towards me. It’s how I end up spending much more time engaging in rough-and-tumble play with my toddler instead of doing the easy thing and nursing him while I surf the web or read. I’m not taking the easy out of breastfeeding, and it’s honestly more than a little inconvenient.

I remember being at this point with Hannah, and I am re-discovering now what I learned then: weaning can be a total pain. Breastfeeding is a really quick and easy way to calm a child. It’s like a parenting quick-fix when things aren’t going well. While I’m ready to finish it, I kind of miss the convenience of it, now that I can’t just roll over and nurse my kid if he wakes up at night.

I’ve given Jacob an excellent start. Breastfeeding has helped us to form close bonds, offered him the very best nutrition, and given me an easy way to meet his needs. I don’t feel that I’m short-changing him by gradually moving to end it, and I’m willing to take my time and follow his cues. Having weaned one child, I know that our relationship will continue going strong when breastfeeding is over. But I will admit that sometimes, just sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, I wonder why I thought weaning was such a good idea after all.

Was there anything that you missed about breastfeeding after you weaned? How did parenting become harder or easier without that tool in your toolbox? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Twice a week Wonder Nanny comes in the morning to hang out with my kids. And twice a week, when I come home, Jacob sees me and shouts, “Sleepy nurse!” (There are two kinds of breastfeeding, you see. Side nurse happens anywhere, and sleepy nurse happens in the computer chair. Of course.)

Thankfully, or not thankfully, Jacob’s words aren’t that intelligible. And so Wonder Nanny asked me one day, “What is he saying?” I looked at my 2 1/2 year old, who is not such a baby at all anymore. He wears underwear most of the time now (with at least one accident every day, but definite progress). He can count to ten and he loves to play hockey and he gets out of bed every day and asks for pancakes. Then I looked at Wonder Nanny, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

On the one hand, I’m not embarrassed that I’m breastfeeding my toddler. I nursed his big sister Hannah until she was almost 3 years old, and I’ve had a similar goal for Jacob. Just now, at 2 1/2, I’m starting to offer alternatives when he asks to nurse, but I don’t push it. I’m not in too much of a rush to be done, and I believe and trust that weaning will happen in its own time.

I also realize that the way to normalize breastfeeding, and especially to normalize breastfeeding older children, is for people like me to talk about it. Right now Wonder Nanny has no children of her own, but maybe one day she will. And when she does, if she finds herself breastfeeding a child much older than she ever thought she would, knowing that she’s not alone may help her. Or at least it may present breastfeeding a walking, talking child as an option.

Hannah breastfeeding as a toddler at 14 months

On the other hand, I don’t think that anyone has to always be the breastfeeding poster child, including me. I don’t nurse Jacob when we’re out in public all that much anymore, because he’s often too busy, and because I can easily offer him a variety of other options if he’s hungry, thirsty or bored. But it’s also, in part, because I’m not sure I personally want to turn my trip to the park into a breastfeeding advocacy opportunity. Since Jacob’s generally OK with not nursing when we’re out, it just simplifies things for me.

I know that if I struck up a conversation about breastfeeding a 2 1/2 year old with random people on the street, I would get a variety of opinions, not all of them positive. The same could be said of many other parenting choices, too. I’m sure that I would hear all kinds of thoughts on spanking or not spanking, homeschooling or co-sleeping if I polled the people in the bank line-up. But I don’t particularly want to open myself up to that. I’m happy with my choices, and they work for my family, and I don’t view it as my responsibility to educate the general public.

In the end, I mumbled something to Wonder Nanny about how Jacob wanted sleepy time, and I left it at that. I’m not sure I’m totally happy with my choice, but I’m also not inclined to bring it up again. My decision to breastfeed my children to an age that exceeds the culturally defined norm is my decision. And sometimes, I can keep it to myself, even if it makes me feel like a bad lactivist.

I guess that some days, I’m not up to being a lactivist at all. I just want to be another mom, doing her best with the children she was given. Because that’s really all any of us is, after all.

What do you think? Do you think it’s important to let people know that you’re breastfeeding your toddler, or do you prefer to keep it to yourself most of the time? Is there an age when you prefer not to breastfeed in public? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

My babies don’t use pacifiers. Unless you believe I am a pacifier, in which case they are all over them.

It wasn’t always this way. Hannah was sucking on a pacifier fairly shortly after birth, and not at my request. She was born at 34 weeks, and whisked off to the NICU right away. In our NICU, all the babies had pacifiers. And whether it was that, or the bottles she was given, or her prematurity, she was also thoroughly nipple confused and refused to latch at the breast. It was a difficult journey, and it took us a long time to get breastfeeding down.

Once Hannah mastered latching, we ditched all of the artificial nipples. I wanted her to figure out how to breastfeed, and I didn’t want to risk a recurrence of the nipple confusion. By the time I offered her a pacifier again, it was the better part of a year later. She was almost 12 months old and she was starting daycare. She looked at me like I had two heads, and that was the end of any pacifier use in our house.

When my second child, Jacob, was born, I was spooked from my experience with Hannah. I didn’t want to go through that again, so we didn’t give him a pacifier. And eventually he got to an age where I realized that we never would.

This is where I say that I don’t see anything wrong with pacifiers. There are some babies who find comfort from them in the car, or while their mother showers, or in other situations when they can’t nurse. And there are some babies who just want to suck all the time, and that can be draining and difficult, especially if you have other kids to take care of. I can see why people use pacifiers. I just didn’t, because I had a bad experience with them. I also don’t eat corn dogs, because I had a bad experience with them. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat them.

As it was, I nursed my children both for nutrition and for comfort. In fact, I am still breastfeeding Jacob at age 2, mostly for comfort. Although I do believe there are still nutritional benefits, I don’t think that’s what it’s about for him. I can’t imagine he thinks it out that much, or that he would separate out the various benefits of breastfeeding. He’s expressing a need and I’m fulfilling it in the easiest way that I know how, and it works for us. That’s it.

Not everyone nurses their 2-year-old. I understand that, just as I understand pacifier use. But I disagree with the idea, which I hear often, that nursing my baby on cue, or nursing my toddler at all, turns me into some sort of human pacifier. Because breastfeeding = nutrition, and pacifier = comfort, or something like that.

I am many things. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a shoddy housekeeper. I am a chocoholic. I am frequently confused. But I am not a pacifier.

A pacifier is a small piece of rubber or silicone, manufactured to mimic the shape of a human nipple. If I nurse my child, I am not taking its rightful place. Quite the contrary – if I were using a pacifier, it would be taking mine. Or else it would be taking the place of my child’s own thumb or fingers, or a sippy cup of water, or a stuffed animal, or a hug and a story, or any other comfort measure that my kid or I might employ.

Just as it’s OK to use a pacifier, it’s OK not to. If the comfort measures you are using work for you and your child, and no one’s getting hurt in the process, that’s all that really matters. Soon enough, your child will outgrow those comfort measures, whatever they are. And you may not even remember exactly why it all seemed so important at the time, anyway.

Did you swear by the pacifier, or did you avoid it at all costs? And have you ever been called a human pacifier? What is your take on that expression? I’d love to hear your thoughts!