Monday, December 22, 2014

Weaning PROGRESS - 28 Months

What can I say, this kid loves the boob.

But FINALLY at 28 months we're down to once a day AND sometimes we skip that too!

I can see the end in sight!

Sometime earlier this month I decided to offer up something else rather than milk in the mornings.  What I ultimately decided on was CARTOONS!

Honestly I feel kind of bad letting him watch cartoons every morning but you know what?!  Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

The older he gets the more I've come to realize that it's best if he agrees to something rather than if I  try to sneakily take it away.

For instance, if you remember a month or two ago when my RE told me that nursing might be ultimately keeping me from getting pregnant Dom just sort of took over and he and Jett would leave the house when Jett and I would normally be nursing or I'd just leave the room and let dad put him to sleep.  Hoping that if milk wasn't there he'd just sort of accept it and move on.

But ultimately that backfired and we ended up with a sobbing mess of a baby screaming for milk and mommy by Sunday morning and we had a very upset mommy who felt awful for abandoning her baby when he clearly needed her.

So, I changed tactics and OFFERED him something else in return for an agreement that accepting the offer meant no milk.

An agreement from him also meant I could remind him that he GOT something in return for not having milk.

It worked like a charm.

For probably a week every morning when I came down and he'd ask me for milk I'd ask him if he'd rather watch cartoons instead of do milk.  Five out of the 7 mornings he said cartoons and only twice did he say milk, which meant no cartoons.  After a week he quit asking for milk and instead asks me for cartoons!  For the moment I am giving in and letting him have his cartoons in the morning but I know somewhere down the line we're going to have a new habit to break!

Baby steps.

Now as we've got the morning session out of the way we've started to work on night time.  We've developed a similar tactic as the morning minus the TV where he gets to stay up an extra 10 minutes and play with daddy if he agrees that daddy is putting him to bed and that means no milk. 

Works some nights, others it doesn't.

Last night I could hear him up there saying "Play sand with daddy and no milk!"  So...HE GETS IT!  And that's what apparently needed to happen at this point...28 months.  He has to be party to the decision, which...I'm cool with.

So, we're almost there folks!  I swear we'll be done by the time he's 3 ;-)

 Officially the last time we nursed in public at the World Series Game in October.  Bittersweet that this part of our relationship is ending but I look forward to whatever comes next!

6 comments:

  1. I love that photo champers and boobies :)

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  2. Ahhh! 28 months???? You are a rockstar. Sabine is almost 18 months and I'm trying desperately to work on weaning my boob-addict. Reading this confirms what I am suspecting - that I need to wait until she has better communication abilities. So far I can tell her "We will have some soon." and buy about 15 minutes, but that is it. Baby steps, right? Glad to hear you are making progress though!

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    1. Belle - what worked for us was saying it was "all gone." We had done sign language all done / all gone for a long time, and she understood the concept of her food being all gone, and it worked fantastically with nursing too (at just shy of 18 months). My MIL had her for 2 days b/c I was super sick, and then when she got home I just told her the milk was all gone. She was sad and asked for it for a couple of days, and then bam, she had moved on. I was almost MORE sad that she moved on so quickly!

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  3. That photo is the best!

    Congrats on figuring out what works for you guys and being able to reason with your child :)

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  4. Toddlers... tiny master-mind negotiators. Seriously. The same tactic works for Austin too, he has to agree to something.. it keeps the peace so much better. And we started the whole cartoon thing to distract and appease him too.. it really does work like a charm.. and I figure the same thing.. "we'll break that habit later.." :-) I'm glad things are going so well!

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  5. LOL - I totally love that photo!
    I'm glad you're both at peace with how this is ending...

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