The adventures of nursing a toddler

The theme for October's Love Makes a Family blog carnival is "Secrets." Specifically, "not the painful bad kind' but rather, "your deep dark parenting secret, the one you don’t really mention in public." And yes, I realize I'm a month late but hey, at least I wrote something, right?!

To be honest, I really couldn't think of one. I'm pretty open and honest about the way I parent. I'm not perfect but I do work very hard at upholding my core values and parenting philosophies at all times...at home and in public.

So, I thought a little harder and a little longer about what to write. And I realized that I haven't given an update on how nursing is going for Baby and I. And I know you've all been waiting with bated breath!

My secret isn't that I still nurse my almost 23 month old. I'm completely open about that and I'm very pleased (and grateful) that Baby has been able to reap the benefits of "milkies" for so long. The secret is that recently I'm really not enjoying it very much at times. Sometimes it's downright painful. I often find myself feeling resentful when Baby nurses and then I feel guilty. Most of the time I gently stop her and try and distract her or calm her to sleep. To clarify, she only nurses 2-3 times a day now and has been night weaned for about 5 months (have I mentioned she sleeps through the night quite regularly now?!). I think my supply has dipped a lot and with my cycles back in full force the "milkies" are just really sensitive and sore at certain times in my cycle. Sometimes "sensitive" and "sore" really mean "holycrapthathurtsandIcan'tstanditforlongerthan2minutes."

I have no plans to wean her at this point. I'm guessing she'll wean herself before long as she already goes 24 hours sometimes without nursing. I don't go out of my way to offer except when she has hurt herself or is really tired. And she rarely asks anymore. When we started out on our nursing journey my goal was one year at least. After we hit one year I didn't really think about a new goal. We just kept going.

I don't know how much longer I'll be ok with nursing. For now, I'm still fine with it and encourage it (I still love the bonding time and the milkie smiles, giggles and cuddles - even with all the painful times).

But I have to admit that I'm hoping she'll wean herself in the new year.

There, I said it out loud.