Weaning a toddler ?

[timorousbeastie]

For those of you who weaned when your child was a toddler, did you have to deal with an increase in tantrums? If so, how long did it last until s/he adjusted and went back to being a sweet, angelic, never-throws-a-fit toddler (oh, wait, that doesn't describe DD before I started weaning, but it could happen, right?)?

I've been nursing DD 3 times a day - when she wakes up, before nap, and before bed. Yesterday I dropped the morning session, replacing it with a sippy of milk. I know I'm only two days in, so it's still early, but OMG, the tantrums. All.morning.long. So many tantrums. It was basically one long tantrum the entire morning. Same thing today. She was fine yesterday afternoon after she nursed/napped. But the morning. Ugh. Please tell me this is short lived!

[MadamePresident]

No idea, but it's got to get better. Do you have to wean now? You could always wait a month and try again.

[timorousbeastie]

Sept 1, 2015 13:52:39 GMT -5 MadamePresident said:

No idea, but it's got to get better. Do you have to wean now? You could always wait a month and try again.

No, there's no particular reason I need to wean right now, I've just reached the point where I'm ready to stop. Maybe I'll give it a week to see how it goes. If it seems like DD isn't ready to start weaning, I'll go back to nursing 3x/day again. Like you said, I could just wait a month to see if she's ready then. 

[anna7602]

How old is she? I weaned DD at 25 months and there was A LOT of talking and explaining that went along with it. DS is 13 months now and I feel like there would be zero explanations if I decided to wean him now.

[timorousbeastie]

Sept 1, 2015 18:55:31 GMT -5 anna7602 said:

How old is she? I weaned DD at 25 months and there was A LOT of talking and explaining that went along with it. DS is 13 months now and I feel like there would be zero explanations if I decided to wean him now.

She's almost 19 months. She doesn't have many words, but she understands a lot of what we say to her. So maybe talking to her more about it might help.

[water*drop]

Sept 1, 2015 19:46:31 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

Sept 1, 2015 18:55:31 GMT -5 anna7602 said:

How old is she? I weaned DD at 25 months and there was A LOT of talking and explaining that went along with it. DS is 13 months now and I feel like there would be zero explanations if I decided to wean him now.

She's almost 19 months. She doesn't have many words, but she understands a lot of what we say to her. So maybe talking to her more about it might help.

DD weaned a lot later than that, but by 18 months, I had started laying down some firm rules for nursing for DD (basically, I started saying no if it wasn't convenient for me instead of just nursing whenever she wanted), and the key to that working for us was talking, talking, talking. In that case, I did a lot of "we don't nurse in the living room" or whatever, but regardless, explaining it helped a ton even though she really didn't have a big enough vocabulary to respond, so talking about it might help.

[whitemerlot]

My dd is a bit older. We are weaning now and she is also giving up her nap. She's having tons of tantrums and whining all day, but I think it's the nap. She is 3 years, 3 months. I'm going to try to put her down for a nap tomorrow when my older one goes back to school.

We are down to 2 nursing sessions a day and she was ok with just one today.

[redpenmama]

I'm in the same boat. I am ready to wean, especially because DS still wants to nurse like every 2 hours around the clock ... at 20 months old. At this point, I am just trying to get him down to nursing around sleep before full-on weaning, but it is impossible. We made it from wakeup until about 2 pm after his nap today -- but it was all downhill from there, and he was banging on me and begging to nurse until bedtime, so I caved in because I couldn't take the screaming.

I weaned DD at 18 months, and she was relatively easy to distract for daytime nursing but cutting the nursing before/after nap and bedtime was ROUGH. Honestly, she screamed for 4 days straight, but then seemed to get that we were done, and she was fine. I'm afraid my son is going to be more difficult based on my failed attempts so far.

[Deleted]

Sept 1, 2015 19:46:31 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

Sept 1, 2015 18:55:31 GMT -5 anna7602 said:

How old is she? I weaned DD at 25 months and there was A LOT of talking and explaining that went along with it. DS is 13 months now and I feel like there would be zero explanations if I decided to wean him now.

She's almost 19 months. She doesn't have many words, but she understands a lot of what we say to her. So maybe talking to her more about it might help.

For DS, 18 months was the height of his toddler nursing. He was SO INTO IT, he wanted it SO MUCH. He signed for it at every opportunity, got super excited. Weaning him wasn't even on my radar. Just a few short months later (started around 21 months) he started losing interest in the before-nap session. So I replaced it with milk and books, and he was thrilled. A month later he got bored of the before-bedtime session, so I dropped that. He signed for nursing EVERY MORNING at wakeup for another solid month, before he got bored of that too. He self-weaned beautifully.

My pedi said that it's common for 1.5 year olds to be really into nursing. But there's a natural weaning time around age 2. That was very true for us. Maybe this just isn't the right weaning moment for your DD. And maybe the morning session is her favorite and not the right session to drop first. If you want to be done nursing and are willing to deal with the tantrums, of course KOKO. But if you don't want to make it a battle, I'd start nursing again in the morning and figure out which session she likes least and drop that one instead. And/or give it another month or two at 3x a day. She might surprise you and lose interest herself.

[simpsongal]

There were quite a few tantrums. He loved nursing. I was motivated to stop b/c we're TTC. I didn't let him sit on my lap and tried to hold him differently so he wouldn't go to nurse. It's been ~3 weeks and it's gotten much better. He surprised me the other day and asked to nurse but I said no. He wasn't happy.

I'm sorry, it's hard. ((hugs))

On the up side, I don't know if it's the weaning or the vitamin B6 but I'm back to sleeping much better. DH noticed too - I used to go into a deep sleep but that stopped when I had DS. It's back!

[bananapancakes]

Sept 2, 2015 8:11:35 GMT -5 bailarina said:

I weaned a little earlier and did not experience tantrums, but I always dropped the midday session first and left morning/night for last. Do you think that would help? 

This was my experience too. We replaced any "non-sleep" nursing sessions with snacks by about 10 months. At a year he was nursing at wake up, before both naps, and then before bed. At around 13 months we dropped the before nap sessions. When we weaned all the way at 16 months he was just nursing at wake up and bed time (most of the time). He started to lose interest in the before bed session and after one night away from me, I decided to do "don't offer, don't refuse" and then that was that. It happened a bit more quickly than I imagined it would but overall, I'm happy with how it went.

Maybe you want to try going back to the morning sessions but eliminate the before nap one? That was the last one for us as he liked it the most. I think it was sort of a time to reconnect after the long night apart. 

[timorousbeastie]

Sept 2, 2015 8:11:35 GMT -5 bailarina said:

I weaned a little earlier and did not experience tantrums, but I always dropped the midday session first and left morning/night for last. Do you think that would help? 

I thought morning might be easier, since I could replace it with a sippy of milk, as opposed to nap/bedtime, when she nurses to calm down before sleeping. I thought I'd see how dropping the morning session goes before potentially screwing with sleep. But I might be wrong on what would be easier for her.

[bananapancakes]

Sept 2, 2015 8:40:35 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

Sept 2, 2015 8:11:35 GMT -5 bailarina said:

I weaned a little earlier and did not experience tantrums, but I always dropped the midday session first and left morning/night for last. Do you think that would help? 

I thought morning might be easier, since I could replace it with a sippy of milk, as opposed to nap/bedtime, when she nurses to calm down before sleeping. I thought I'd see how dropping the morning session goes before potentially screwing with sleep. But I might be wrong on what would be easier for her.

When I stopped nursing to sleep at nap time, I definitely had to replace it with rocking to sleep. We did it when my H was off for a few days and he took over getting him down for awhile.

[simpsongal]

Sept 2, 2015 8:40:35 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

Sept 2, 2015 8:11:35 GMT -5 bailarina said:

I weaned a little earlier and did not experience tantrums, but I always dropped the midday session first and left morning/night for last. Do you think that would help? 

I thought morning might be easier, since I could replace it with a sippy of milk, as opposed to nap/bedtime, when she nurses to calm down before sleeping. I thought I'd see how dropping the morning session goes before potentially screwing with sleep. But I might be wrong on what would be easier for her.

Changing the routine helps a lot.  I used to bring DS into bed to nurse in the morning.  When we started weaning I would get dressed for the day and meet DH and DS downstairs. 

[bananapancakes]

Sept 2, 2015 8:44:26 GMT -5 simpsongal said:

Sept 2, 2015 8:40:35 GMT -5 timorousbeastie said:

I thought morning might be easier, since I could replace it with a sippy of milk, as opposed to nap/bedtime, when she nurses to calm down before sleeping. I thought I'd see how dropping the morning session goes before potentially screwing with sleep. But I might be wrong on what would be easier for her.

Changing the routine helps a lot.  I used to bring DS into bed to nurse in the morning.  When we started weaning I would get dressed for the day and meet DH and DS downstairs. 

Yes, this too. The first morning we didn't nurse, I brought him out of his room right away. We sat in the living room and I gave him a bowl of dry Cheerios and a sippy of water. 

We always nursed on a single bed that I had in his room and I actually got rid of it all together.

[lolo]

We are down to one session (DD is 27m). Changing the routine is a good idea. Also, allowing your LO to be sad any validating that feeling helped here a lot. Making sure you build in time for lots of snuggles at another time is also key.

ETA: I agree that 17-19 months would not have been a good time here for weaning.