Friday, September 18, 2009

I just Want to Nurse All Night...

I saw this little poem in a reader's note to Mothering Magazine (http://www.mothering.com/) one of my favorite magazines and really other than the La Leche League one the only parenting magazine I take serriously.

Iene Miene Minie Moe
I want the one with the best flow
I don't care, left or right
I just want to nurse all night!

This made me chuckle because just a few days earlier we were dealing with this in real life (which at the time was NOT funny).

Anyways, our daughter uses a pacifier (gasp...I know!) and has since she started day care, something I sincerely regret. This Monday we tried to take it away cold turkey and it completely backfired on us. I think she just couldn't deal with loosing it completely, she needed sometime to say goodbye and part with her friend on her own terms. Monday night after we took it away it wasn't too bad, but Tuesday and Wednesday I became the pacifier back-up. Now there was a time when she was about 3-9 months old that nursing to sleep was the only way I could get to sleep too, those wonderful hormones were running through my blood and it was so relaxing. Now that she is almost 3 years old her suck is much stronger and more than enough to keep me up for as long as she is nursing, which for two days in a row was pretty much ALL NIGHT LOOOOONG. Final in the wee hours of Wednesday morning I told my husband I couldn't do it any more, we needed to purchase a new pacifier and find a more gentle approach to weaning her off it. What a difference that made. She doesn't use it at all during the day and will take a nap without it, but after dinner she still requests it and we allow that (no pacifier until after dinner is the rule) and then about bed time she asks to nurse once and then falls asleep without it. I'm pleased with this progress and can see a time soon when she will be giving it up altogether, but we know it has to be on more of her own timeline. Dr. Sears talks about how to tell if a change is too much for a toddler and she was showing all the symptoms; clingy, whinny, iritable, just a very unhappy child; so we knew something needed to give and we feel it's important to acknowledge our daughters needs so we comprimised.

I think the lesson we both had to be reminded of is that she has her needs too and while they are different from ours (and we may not feel they are important) they are VERY important to her and we need to recognize those needs and work to accomidate them when it's reasonable.

One change we have made successfully is moving her to her own bed. We followed the Dr. Sears baby sleep book very closely and this transition has been a good one, she actually prefers her own bed now (except for when she needs a night time nurse).

Tips for easy change:
- Start slow - we first talked about getting her a "big girl bed" then we went out and bought one with her, she got to try it out and everything
- Expect two steps forward and one back - the first week it was hard for us all to sleep, we missed our daughter in our bed and she missed our bed, so we tried different tactics - laying with her in her bed, letting her fall asleep in our bed and then moving her
- Listen to your child - we recognized her need and desire to be close to us and would take breaks from trying the new bed when she seemed to need it, now she wants her own bed and sleeps much better in it
- Be patient - change takes time for everyone, eventually things will work out, remember there aren't any students in college sucking on pacifiers, nursing, sleeping in their parents bed, or still wearing diapers (at least eventually you can use peer pressure if nothing else works...hehe)

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