I’m not looking forward to this

Dear Bam Bam,

It’s time to wean you. And not only because twice in the last 2 days you have clamped down tight on my nipple with your full set of teeth, just as you were entering dreamland, and bit me so hard it made me cry. It’s not because my extremely sensitive pregnant nipples feel like they’ve been through a meat grinder every morning after you nurse half the night, just to go back to sleep, either. Though those are compelling and urgent reasons these days.

I was going to wait until you could talk to wean you. Experience tells me it’s easier that way, when we can have a conversation about it, and you can tell me what your other needs are. I didn’t wean your sister until she was 3, and then we had a milk and cookies party where I explained that she was big enough to drink from a cup and dip cookies in her milk and she didn’t need breast milk anymore. We had to have 3 of those parties over the next few months when she remembered and got sad and needed to be reminded that being a big kid is a good thing.

You seem so young compared to her then. I don’t think that is going to work.

But I have to wean you, and teach you sleep on your own. You have a baby brother or sister coming in 6 short months. I need you to not think the milk belongs to you by the time the baby shows up. I don’t want to do tandem nursing. I don’t think you need it.

But this is going to be hard. Probably more for me than for you. How do I wean a child who chortles with delight and yells “Wheee”, as he throws himself into bed in anticipation of me laying down next to him and finally getting to nurse again. (I don’t nurse you during the day now, only naptime and bedtime, and when you wake in the middle of the night, and the time after that, and the time after that.)

Your delight is what makes it so hard. (You were going to be my last, I thought. I was going to take this whole thing very slowly. But plans change.)

That and the knowledge of how sleepless we will both be for the first little while when this starts, and the memory of how much time it takes to soothe a toddler to sleep without the breast. I keep putting it off until a more opportune time, which, let’s face it, is never going to arrive.

So we begin.

This hurts me more than you. You should know that. And I will give you cookies, just not at bedtime.

Love,
Mama