Monday, August 22, 2011

'Ghee's had 'nuff Milk, now.' The Sprocket is now weaned...

I thought it would be a lot harder.
I thought there would be tears and tantrums and kicking and screaming, biting and running away from home.
All there has been is distraction 'Would you like a pink milk, a coffee (babicino), a hot chocolate?' and a lots of talking. 
And almost without realising it the days have slipped past and now it's been two and a bit weeks since my baby boy had his last nurse. 
Gulp. Sigh. Sniff.
I think I can say it's official. The Sprocket is now (touch wood) at the age of 2 years and 9 months, weaned.
For awhile now feeding the Poppet and Sprocket has been turning by brain to mush and I have felt my life-milk being drained from me. 
It exhausted me and made me cranky as, and a person I didn't want to be, grumpy with the Sprocket when he pulled and poked and prodded at me and suddenly yanked my top down in public. Cross when he did summersaults with a nipple in his mouth. And  I hate being cross with my little boy. 
So the weaning was a must. 
But how to do it was a massive drama.
For awhile I'd been saying that when the Poppet turned one I would just go cold turkey and wean both the Poppet and the Sprocket, as it would be too hard to wean the Sprocket when he still saw the Poppet getting milk. But I was talking to a mum at playgroup about it and she reminded me about the WHO guidelines (I've quoted them enough myself!) and asked why didn't I keep feeding the Poppet and 'just say no,' to the Sprocket. 
Just say no to the Sprocket? 
A novel concept. 
But the reality of stopping my leetle leetle baby girl nursing when we both enjoy it and it's so beneficial kept nagging at me. 
And finally I decided it couldn't hurt to just try weaning the Sprocket solo.
The first two days were a breeze - they were over a weekend and we were so busy and on the go the Sprocket hardly had time to think about the M-I-L-K (referred to in our house then as the K-L-I-M) 
And after that we just... distracted him. 
Occasionally when I'm feeding the Poppet now he'll come over and have a look. "Bubba milk," he'll say. "Mummy milk for bubba." 
"That's right. Bubba is just a baby so she needs Mummy Milk."
"Mummy milk for Ghee?"
"No darling. Bubba is still little so she still needs mummy milk. When Ghee was a baby he had lots and lots of mummy milk. But now he's a big boy so he has big boy milk." 
And he'll nod and look wise and say in his sweet little boy voice, 
"Ghee's had enuff mummy milk." 
And maybe there have been some tears with weaning the Sprocket. But they seem to have all been mine.





No comments:

Post a Comment