Avery is Weaned!

Hopefully this post doesn't jinx anything, but I am excited to share that it has been 5 days since Avery last nursed.  I started cutting back on nursing sessions in January, and alas, 3 months later we seem to be done! 

How did I manage to wean a child who LOVED nursing in a reasonably gentle way, you might ask?  Certainly we did things gradually, for one. In January, I cut out Avery's evening nursing session by using the clock as a guideline.  I made goals by saying to myself, for example, "This week I won't nurse Avery past 6:45pm." And then I worked to move that time earlier and earlier until Avery no longer asked to nurse in the evenings. 

Next I worked to cut out the pre-nap feeding.  I thought the post-nap feeding would be the second one to drop, but it proved more difficult than the pre-nap session.  The pre-nap feeding was pretty easy to drop, I just had to help Avery learn a new nap time routine.  It turned out not to be a huge deal.

The post-nap feeding was the hardest for sure.  I tried distracting Avery with all kinds of snacks when she woke up, with games, going outside, all kinds of things.  And I abandoned all zip-up shirts/jackets during this time in favor of high-cut shirts and Matt's thick sweatshirts! What worked best was putting the kids straight into the car as soon as Avery woke up from her nap and going out to do a quick errand or two.  The car ride was a big enough distraction that when we got home, she wasn't upset about missing out on nursing.

The last session remaining was the wake-up nursing session.  I didn't really have a genius plan for eliminating this one, and I had basically resolved myself to not completely weaning Avery until our Hawaii trip in June (more on that another time!).  Matt and I will be away for 4 days, and that would give Avery several days to learn a new morning routine. 

However, this past weekend Avery more or less decided on her own that she didn't want to nurse in the morning!  The first day, last Friday, our morning routine was a bit different than usual and Avery was distracted and simply didn't ask to nurse.  The next few days I intentionally did things in a different order in the morning, and I used a bit of distraction as well.  Like when Avery started dragging her blanket over to me for nursing, I used it to hide her, Hayden, and myself under it for awhile and play games. Overall though, I feel confident that Avery just hasn't been very interested in nursing. This is comforting to me, because at times I felt guilty about redirecting her away from something she loved so much. (Even though I know leaving behind old favorites and replacing them with new things is an important part of growing up.)

Today and yesterday there were one or two times when Avery indicated she wanted to nurse, and I asked her if she wanted a snack, to which she said, "snack", and was very agreeable to me taking her to the kitchen for a snack. So I think she is well on her way to forgetting about nursing.  And now that we are 5 days into NOT nursing, I am not about to revert.

We had several times in the past few months when Avery was sick and/or teething and those times felt like huge setbacks.  During those times, Avery would want to nurse quite frequently.  At first it bothered me, as it felt like we were taking one step forward and two steps backward.  But for each time that Avery was sick/teething and regress, she would return to her normal (new) nursing routine as soon as she felt better. So it wasn't a lasting regression.  Avery still has more teeth on the way- molars, in fact- and I'm a bit nervous about how she will be when the teething pain starts back up again and she no longer has her favorite comfort tool available.

There you have it- my weaning story.  Probably not as interesting to you as to me... but writing it down is the only way I will remember it.