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A little more than two years ago, I wrote about my experiences nursing a preschooler. At the time I discussed the fact that my nearly 4-year-old daughter was still nursing and how I never planned or expected to be nursing a 4-year-old, yet it just happened.
"I didn’t set out to nurse a preschooler, but somehow along the way my sweet little baby grew from an infant to a toddler and eventually blossomed into a preschooler in what now seems like the blink of an eye. I am confident this won’t go on forever and when I look back on this time when she’s 10 or 20 or 30, and I look at the young woman she’s become, I am hopeful that I will feel good about the choices I made and have no regrets."
As I suspected, it didn't "go on forever." I never blogged about it when Ava weaned, but that milestone occurred almost four months after my post. She was 4 1/4 years old. At that time I was also nursing my son -- her younger brother. From what I can remember, she and I had talked about weaning and being done with mama milk for a while. I felt like after a long, mostly* wonderful nursing relationship with Ava, I was comfortable with the idea of her weaning. Although she wasn't excited to wean, I felt like Ava was pretty ready too.
I remember one night she went to bed without nursing (which is the only time she would nurse at that point and had been since she was 2 1/2). After all of the discussions we'd had about weaning, it seemed to me like the perfect stopping point. The next night as we cuddled to go to sleep, she asked for "na-na" and I explained to her that she was done having na-na. She cried a few tears that night, but we cuddled and she went to sleep without na-na. The next couple days she continued to ask for it before bed and sometimes cried a bit or was sad, but I never felt like it was unbearable for her. If I had felt it was absolutely unbearable for her, I would have put off weaning longer, but I never got that impression. Yes, she briefly mourned the loss, but the transition went well.
After several weeks had passed and I felt fairly confident that she had lost the knack of suckling, she would -- once in a while -- still ask for na-na and at that point I would let her try. As I'd suspected, she couldn't figure out how to get milk out any longer. It was a little frustrating for her, but I think it was comforting that I let her try rather than just tell her "no, you don't have na-na anymore." Letting her try seemed like a gentle way for her to discover on her own that she had, in fact, weaned.
While I wouldn't call what I did with Ava exactly "child-led weaning," it felt like a pretty gentle transition and was what I deemed best for our family at that time. After nursing two kids (although usually not at the same time) for a year and a half, I was ready to go back to nursing just one child.
And that brings us to the present, when my now 3 3/4-year-old son is still nursing. This time around, however, it didn't come as any surprise to me that I'm nursing a preschooler. He seems like he might wean before Ava did, but I'm not holding my breath. Lately, he will go a few days at a time without asking for it, so I think we are heading in that direction. He went five nights without nursing while I was at BlogHer this year, but when I got home -- sure enough -- he wanted to nurse before bed. Most recently he went about four or five nights without asking to nurse while I've been home. I thought he might be done altogether, but then asked to nurse again. I talked to him about possibly being done and he insisted that he was NOT, so he nursed before bed. But then the past two nights, he did not.
I'm not in a big hurry for Julian to be done. I know it will be bittersweet just like it was when Ava weaned and perhaps a bit more so since I'm fairly certain I'm not going
