Family Forum / Pregnancy / Breastfeeding / January 2005

Keeping toddlers so busy throughout the day can help to disuade them from
nursing. How about enrolling him in a 2-day a week preschool. He will be
gone some mornings, that way he won't nurse. ;o) Keep talking about it. I
know one mom on this group offered a toy that the child wanted really bad,
but she told them that he had to be a big boy first and give up mommy milk.
It worked, if I recall correctly. As far as getting your son to eat more
food, incorporate him with your meals. Have him help out and cook with you.
Chances are your son will want to eat what he has helped cook. Also I don't
know if you are nursing to sleep at night at this point, but if you are,
then perhaps you could not be around for bedtime a few nights a week and
start having hubby put your son to bed. (this will be extremely helpful once
you have another child). Good luck.

Not much personal experience with this yet since DS is still nursing 2
to 3 tmes a day, but a friend at church told me how she encouraged her
5 year old daughter to wean.  The child was a boobie freak and just
would not wean.  So the mom asked some friends at LLL and they told her
to tell her daughter for several days that "sometimes nummies [their
word for boobies] go bad," and "sometimes the nummies just don't taste
good anymore."  After a few days of talking about boobies going bad,
the mom put tabasco on her nipples when a regular nursing time was
approaching.  (I thought, "Oh my!  That must sting like mad!" but she
assured me it did not.)  Her daughter had a few sucks and then said,
"Oh, the nummies HAVE gone bad.  They're very sour."  And that was the
end of nursing for her.  I thought the tabasco would have burned her
mouth, but her mom said the LLL people told her that children's sense
of taste hasn't fully developed yet.  So, I suppose that's why she
thought it tasted sour.

I don't know how you would feel about this idea, but I'm sharing it in
case you want to try it.  I know the tabasco sounds weird, but my
friend is a very kind, senstive person (and a little crunchy), and I
can't imagine she would do anything that would cause her daughter pain.
PC

mom to DS 10/2003

Maybe I should keep my mouth shut, because with the food we haven't had
any problems and with nursing-more-than-I-want we have some problems
but haven't really been able to solve them, but here's what I think:

I think the nursing issue and the food issue are kind of separate - it
seems to me if he's nursing 3 hours a day, most of it must be just for
comfort.  There are kids who don't like to eat who don't nurse, and
there are kids who nurse more than their mother wants who have no
problem with food.

In fact, if I were in your shoes, I don't think I'd talk about "eating
more growing food and nursing less" because then your son might start
thinking "Oh, if I start trying new foods, maybe I'll have to nurse
less" or "If I start nursing less, maybe I'll have to eat more than I
want to", and it seems to me he might be ready to solve one problem
before he gets ready to solve the other.

Regarding the food, (here's where I really shouldn't give advice, since
DD has always been a great eater) I like the advice of Ellyn Sater.  I
read her book "Child of Mine" and she has several other books too,
including "How to Get Your Child to Eat, but Not Too Much".

Ellyn Sater would _not_ advise making the food more fun for the
toddler, it seems to me.  Her basic philosophy is that the parents
decide what, when, and where the child will eat, and the child decides
how much and whether to eat.  That is, the parent has to just put the
food down (trying to include something that the child likes with almost
every meal or snack, so the child never has to choose between eating a
new food and going hungry) and trust the child to eat enough.  Part of
the idea is that the parents should try not to let the kid know that
the parents care a lot about how much the kid eats, because then the
child may see not eating as a way to express his independence or
control the parents, etc.  I'm sure it's very hard advice to follow if
you start out with a child whom you don't think is eating enough, but
she says it works.  It certainly has worked great for DD (now 28
months), but we started the Ellyn Sater "division of responsibility"
thing when DD started solid food and DD was always a good eater.

I also really like the advice of having your son help you cook.  I
don't know whether the other person mentioned it, but your son could
also help you plan menus, shop, etc.

It sounds as if the foods your son eats make up a pretty good diet, at
least.

I'm very sorry all the nursing is interfering with your getting
pregnant.

About cutting down on nursing, unfortunately I have to report that I
also haven't been very successful in pushing DD to cut down on nursing
before she was ready, but at least we have been able to cut down some,
as long as we have taken steps when she seems ready for them.

Right now we're down to about 2 nursing sessions per day (nap,
bedtime), and at each nursing session we nurse about 10 minutes, then
she falls asleep without nursing.

In brief, cutting out nursing sessions didn't work for us at first,
ending the nursing session when she seems to be losing interest and
just nursing out of habit does work for us, and not having Mommy around
at times when she would normally nurse does work for us, when we can
manage it.

Each time we make a big change wrt nursing (when we stopped night
nursing and the first time DH put her to bed at bedtime), we give her
at least a few days notice that the change is coming, and then tell her
over and over as the big even approaches.  For each big change, she was
somewhat upset the first few days, and then she got over it.

I too tried to cut out the nursing sessions that seemed least
important, and it didn't work, and that was really frustrating for me.
Then, some time passed, and DD started wanting those nursing sessions
less and less often.  Sometime around then, I decided that we would
nurse only in bed, so when DD asked for nursing in the middle of the
morning I would ask her if she wanted to go up to the bedroom and do
it, and she would normally say no.

Personally I wouldn't feel comfortable trying the Tabasco sauce
suggestion because I'd be afraid it would really scare DD.

Good luck,

Anonymommy

DD - Sept. 02
edd June 05

If you are ovulating, your fertility is not impaired. There is zip
evidence that nursing causes miscarriage or stops implantation of
healthy pregnancies, so I'm not sure you need to wean to have another
baby. If it was supressing ovulation, that would be another thing.

I nursed all three of my kids until they were 4 or 5, and it was most
definitely NOT about food. It was plugging into the mummy-battery. I
worked full time once each was 8 or 9 months old, so they weren't
nursing during the day at all (and bottles stopped at age 2 or 3), but
the minute mum got home, they were on me like limpets and I know it was
the emotional and physical connection that they craved.

Mary G.