To think breastfeeding this long can be cruel?

[Greendresss]

I’m a huge advocate of breastfeeding where it’s possible to do it. I have breastfed mine and the first time round I continued until dd was 2 and 4 months. She kept waking to feed and I wanted her to wean herself off it in her own time but I was exhausted. One day and I remember it so clearly, I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to try and communicate with her that I couldn’t do it and she needed to sleep with her teddies now etc. it was awful. It took weeks for her to settle and much upset. With my next I stopped at 15 months before he became aware properly that I had switched to a bottle at night. There was minimal resistance, he obviously didn’t fully understand the switch to bottle and that was much simpler to ‘wean off’ as it wasn’t associated with comfort in the same way as the breast. I often think about how upset I made dd and feel it was because she was so much more aware of what I was taking away. Do you think there’s something in this? Or perhaps my youngest was more chilled anyway and would have been if u had continued to over 2?

You weren’t cruel and your DD won’t even remember it
i breastfed my DD until she was three - if I ask her now she doesn’t remember being fed that way or even me stopping
you’ve done an amazing job feeding your babies past the year mark for both of them
make your inner voice a nice one x

No, I don’t think you carried on for too long at all. I don’t think age comes in to it really, just the individual child and how they’re feeling at a given time!
I BF DS until he was 2. He stopped of his own accord as we both got thrush and it put him right off. I still remember the last time he tried, he had a little grump that he couldn’t and went back to sleep and that’s the last we heard of it!

@rubyslippers thank you x

I bf my first till she was 2.5. We managed to wean quite gradually but I still felt guilty about it because I had to "reason" with her, as you say, she had a lot of language by then and everything had to be negotiated through conversation.

Three months later, we were out and saw a mum breastfeeding and I said something like do you remember I used to feed you like that. Dd had no recollection whatsoever. She was baffled. And yet she could remember a holiday we'd had in the canaries.

I think nature is amazing. It erases breastfeeding and weaning from the child's memory somehow.

I switched to bottle when my daughter was under one. She protested with every bone in her little body. She was very aware that a bottle was not a breast so I don’t think it was a case of your son not being aware.

It's different personalities, OP. I've weaned five toddlers at night and they all reacted differently to it.

Wasn't cruel, but stopping suddenly is going to be harder at any age than weaning off. What I did was gradually reduce down so they only got it at night and if ill.
Then at night they got the choice of a story or milk, and gradually they chose story. All stopped naturally about 3yo.

I definitely wouldn’t use the word cruel but the longer you do something and the older they get, the harder it is to break the habit.

It’s like having a dummy.
They say the longer you let them have it, the harder it becomes taking it away because it’s a habit/comfort thing.

You did absolutely nothing wrong with either kids.

I bet you don’t remember when your mum stopped BF you and there will be many of us who got upset that our mums stopped BF/co-sleeping with us but none of us would remember.

She would have forgotten about it almost straight away.

Kids are all different. Both my kids were breastfed when I was around, but I when I was at work they had bottles.

DS1 stopped breastfeeding on his own at age 15 months. It just seemed like he couldn’t be bothered with breastfeeding any more, was happy with bottle.

DS2 preferred breastfeeding and I had to force him to stop when he was nearly 2, because I was done with it. I did it gradually, reducing the duration of each feed, until my milk supply diminished enough for it to be an unrewarding experience for him!

Of course neither of them have any memory of this whatsoever, and would actually die of embarrassment if I asked them! (Ages 19 and 15)

You dont know if she would have suffered less if you stopped earlier. Just because ir was easy with your second, doesnt mean your first would have been the same. All babies are different and have different needs.

I don't think either option is cruel.

The only cruel part is mothers punishing themselves for stopping or not stopping.

Or very extended breastfeeding, which is an unpopular opinion but one I stand by. Maybe not cruel, but unnecessary and done entirely for the gratification of the mother.

Please stop beating yourself up over this OP.

It very likely all down to the child's personality.

I stopped BF one of my children before bed - the only feed she was having at that point - after telling her I thought it was time we stopped and got a very calm response along the lines of 'ok' - can't remember exactly what she said, it was a long time ago - but she certainly wasn't bothered by stopping like that.

She never had another feed from me from that time on and was completely fine with it.

She was easy going from the moment she was born, or so it seemed, and is still, in her 40s, a very easy going adult.