I did something I never did before.
A few things, actually.
I nursed a kid until 2 months shy of her third birthday- my first two kids I nursed until 19 months each, this one until 34 months.
This is the first time I nursed all the way through a pregnancy and then nursed two kids at once, also called tandem nursing.
This is the first time I nursed a kid until she was old enough to have an intelligent conversation with me, that I could reason with her, and could tell me in her words how much she loved nursing.
And this is also the first time I made a weaning party.

Now what exactly is a weaning party, you might ask?
Well, I certainly didn’t invent it.
Nor did anyone invent it recently.
In fact, weaning parties are a really, really old tradition that seems to have fallen out of practice for whatever reason- the Bible says that Abraham threw a feast on the day that Isaac was weaned, so… I’m just following in his footsteps.

But actually, the reason I made a “weaning party” was similar to the reason I tandem nursed in the first place.
I love nursing babies. But by a certain age, somewhere past their first birthday, I stop enjoying nursing. Because kids don’t just nurse then. They do acrobatics and hurt you while nursing, and I start feeling touched out by that point. And I weaned Lee and Ike by the time they were 19 months, because I was pregnant, and especially when pregnant I don’t like all the touching, and nursing hurts, etc….
However, I didn’t wean Anneliese when I got pregnant with Rose, because I felt that with my boys, I weaned them too young, before they were emotionally ready to be weaned, so they just transitioned from nursing to “nursing a bottle” or similar, which I then needed to wean them from after. I only want to wean each kid once, and I felt I would be able to do that best by letting them wean when they were emotionally ready and mature enough.
So I was still nursing Anneliese, and I’ve been nursing her. But now I’ve weaned her…

Because I didn’t want weaning to be traumatic for Anneliese, as it was for Ike, and I suspect Lee, I wanted to make her ready for weaning, so it wouldn’t be suddenly losing the thing she loved, making weaning be a sad or traumatic occasion.
Until recently Anneliese was asking to nurse every two or three days, typically when she saw me nursing Rose, and in the past little bit, when she asked, I was able to push her off and say “later” and she forgot about nursing….
So I got the feeling she’s ready to be weaned.
However, I didn’t just want to phase out nursing more and more gradually (for a bunch of reasons)- I wanted to end our nursing relationship on a positive note.
For the past few days I was talking to her about how she’s a big girl now, can do big things, and Rose is still tiny. And talked about all the big girl things Anneliese can do. And talked about how when she was a baby, she couldn’t eat, and nursing was her food, and now Anneliese is a big girl and can eat real food, etc… I told her now she’s big, and we’re going to make her a party to say “Bye bye nursing”, that we’ll have a “no more nursing” party, and we’d have balloons, and ice cream, etc…
After repeating that again and again to her over a couple of days…

Today we went to the store and got Anneliese 3 helium filled balloons that she picked out and wore on her wrist home. And we also picked out ice cream, which we served…

I snapped a picture of her with the balloon and the ice cream, with her waving “bye bye to nursing”, and talked about how big she is…
And then I served a milk based meal, of foods that Anneliese likes- macaroni with cheese, and apples for most of the people in the family, and goat cheese for me.

We sang some songs that we made up, saying “Bye bye nursing, bye bye nursing” to a bunch of different tunes, and talked about how much fun this no more nursing party is, and after this party, no more nursing because she’s big…

So that was that.

Do I think she’ll never ask to nurse again? No. She probably will..
But I’ll talk to her about how she already had her “no more nursing party” and now she’s a big girl, and we can do other fun things together, like reading stories and singing songs and hugs and kisses…

I don’t think she’ll be traumatized. I don’t think there’ll be tantrums and crying fits like there were when I weaned my boys. Because she’s old enough to understand things, old enough to reason with, old enough that she can understand that Mommy isn’t abandoning her because she isn’t nursing anymore…

But time will tell.

And for now, I’m down to just nursing one.

We’ll see how long this one nurses for.


To those of you moms that nursed, how long did you nurse for? Did any of you do extended breastfeeding or tandem nursing? For those that did nurse kids till later ages, what did you do to wean them? Did you do a “weaning party” or do any ceremony or anything to mark the transition from nursing to not? For those that were tandem nursing, how did you find that went for you, with the constant nursing reminders from the little siblings?

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