A Weaning Story

I breastfed my son until he was 15 months old. Weaning him was easy as pie and he didn't care at all when there was no more boob. My daughter, on the hand, was not so easy to wean.

I read as many blogs, doctor websites, forums, etch, as I could to try to figure out how to wean my stubborn little girl. She was going on eighteen months old, and I had barely scratched the surface. I tried everything I read from going cold-turkey, to slowly taking away, to letting her figure out when she wanted to stop. None of the methods worked, and I gave them all an honest shot. Finally, when I really, really, really wanted my breasts back and couldn't take it anymore (mostly because she hurt me a lot) I discovered a rare gem.

I had been trying to tell her my boobs were owie, and thought perhaps then she'd leave them alone (to no avail of course), when I discovered a comment by a lady who had put band-aids on her breasts and that made her toddler not nurse. I was willing to try anything at this point, and had even considered putting something nasty tasting on my boobs to get her to wean, but band-aids wouldn't make me smell bad, so, why not?

It worked instantly! Although there were times she would see the band-aids and cry; she never tried to nurse while they were on. I would take them off to let her nurse a little to avoid engorgement, but eventually wore them all the time. It took about a month of wearing them on and off and then a week of wearing them all the time to completely wean her, but it was way easy and so worth it.

When she doesn't feel good the band-aids go on still because she'll want the comfort of the breast, but I've been getting better at comforting her with a hug and a Barney doll. :)