My heart is breaking right now.  My baby girl, who is now 1 year and 2 weeks old, needs to be weaned from my breast!  I took her to the Dr. and while she is growing and developing well, her weight is a bit down.  She refuses to drink whole milk and the Dr said that while my breast milk still holds a ton of nutritional value for her, it cannot keep up with her caloric needs.  If she would drink from a cup or bottle…if she would drink anything other than breast milk…I could continue nursing.  But since she is so stubborn (don’t know where she gets it from), I need to wean her in order to get her drinking other things from other vessels aside from my breast.

I had only planned to breast-feed her the first year anyway; but I really didn’t think it would be this hard to wean her.  She absolutely refuses to fall asleep on her own.  For every nap, and every night at bedtime, if I am present, she wants to be nursed to sleep.  And then on nights like last night, she wakes up every two hours and needs me to nurse her back to sleep again.  After last night, I realized that this madness has to end!  I cannot take it anymore and now I know that all this breastfeeding is actually not helping her any either.  The time has come, but wow is it hard!

I put her down for bed an hour ago, and she is still crying!  I have tried everything.  I go in every couple of minutes to lay her back down, rub her tummy, and let her know that I’m still here.  The second I walk out, she stands up and starts wailing again.  I thought perhaps if I spaced out my visits that would help.  I started going in every ten minutes or so, but to no avail.  She freaks out every time I walk out of the room.  Like I said, we are rounding the hour mark and she is still going strong, but I am wearing thin…very thin.

I am about ready to crack and go in there…..scoop her up…..

Ok….she broke me!  As I was writing I just couldn’t take it anymore so I went in and rescued her from the hell I was putting her through…or perhaps me picking her up was her rescuing me…either way, I just couldn’t let her cry any longer.  I picked her up and sat down in the rocking chair where I usually nurse her to sleep.  I held her close…told her that it was going to be ok…that somehow we would get through this breakup…and rocked her in my arms.  I did not nurse her nor did she even try to get to my breast at that point.  She simply closed her eyes and buried her head in my arm.  I laid her back down in her crib after a few minutes and she started to fuss again.  I rubbed her tummy for a second or two, just long enough to stop the tears before they really started again…and I left her nearly asleep in her crib still doing that tiny little baby gasp that baby’s do after a good, long, hard cry.

I have to be honest…I feel like the cruelest mom in the world right now.  Why does the “tough love” have to start so early in their young lives?  I know by going in there and picking her up after an hour of crying, I just taught her to cry for an hour and ten minutes next time to get what she wants.  But seriously…is it that big of a deal? So what if she needs me to rock her to sleep.  So what if when she is the most vulnerable she wants her mother.  Heck, I’m 33 years old and I still want my mom to rock me to sleep at times and tell me everything will be ok!

I guess I will just try to do better tomorrow.  I will hold out on the breastfeeding since it has now become a health issue, for as long and as much as humanly possible.  But I think for now I will have to trade one bad habit for another.  If my little angel needs to give up nursing, I’m not going to make her give me up too.  One battle at a time.  Let’s just try and get her to sleep without the boob first and then work on getting her down without me holding her tight…perhaps a gradual approach is what we both need at this point.

And hey, by the time she’s off to kindergarten I bet we will both be well adjusted!

UPDATE:

I wrote the above post a few days ago and we have made some progress…daddy gets up with her when she wakes in the middle of the night.  Just not having me there as temptation has helped.  I also put her down kicking and screaming tonight, but this time I held out.  She cried for roughly 40 min….20 min shy of last time….and I only cried for about 30 min ;0)  So all in all…we are making some head way!