I NEED my 2yo to stop BF

[merrilymay]

Lying curled up in a toddler bed at 4am last night breastfeeding my 2yo I think I finally reached my limit. I've had enough - sod waiting for her to self-wean, I just want to stop.

But how? She is a booby obsessed little minx. When she was little she would have an evening BF then happily be put in her bed awake and fall asleep - these days I end up lying in bed with her BFing to sleep which takes anything from 5 to 30 mins. If she wakes up in the night (not that often admittedly, but it does happen) it's the only thing that will get her off to sleep. It's the first thing she wants in the morning. During the day if we're out and about she's fine, but at home the minute I sit down anywhere it appears I am fair game and she is pulling at my top asking for mummy milk.

DH puts the kids to bed 2 nights a week as I'm in work, and she goes down without a hitch for him. He has even taken them away for a weekend to his family without me and she was completely fine. But if I'm in the house she wants milk.

I've just had enough - but I can't see a way to stop that won't involve her being incredibly upset . Any advice appreciated!

Is there any way you can go away for a few days?
Or be out of the house a lot for a few days with DH doing bedtimes?
Try to go for a week giving her as little opportunity as possible to ask for milk.
It's amazing how quickly young children forget about things when they're out of mind.

If not, you need to distract her as much as possible.
When she asks for a drink give her something different. If she's hungry, a snack. If she's thirsty, a drink from a cup. If she's sleepy and needs a cuddle, give her one of those, but minus the milk.
Also wear clothes that give minimal access to your breasts so that she finds it harder to get at you.
If possible get DH to do all the bedtimes for a while too.

It seems the perfect excuse for a weekend away with a friend!

thanks Ruth, going away sounds like a good idea, and I am going away for one night in August but that's about it, and no chance of any more unfortunately DH works long hours and apart from the days I work is rarely home in time for bedtime. I think you're right though, maybe I need to tie him down to a week of getting home early, and then make sure I 'pop out to the shops' (she has to see me leave or she won't believe I'm not there!) just befre bedtime.

I need to get tougher as well, I have to say I'm guilty of giving in to her milk requests too easily just to shut her up so I can have 5 minutes peace to drink a cup of tea. Offering snacks etc during the day instead sounds like a good idea, or maybe snuggling up to read a book instead. Tbh, if we could get bedtime cracked the rest would probably be easy...

Polo necks all week it is!

What would happen if you said 'no' and offered a sippy cup of cows milk or water or even juice instead?

I weaned ds2 like that and he was surprisingly amenable.

yeah, I've tried cows milk in a cup, it works occasionally but just as a short distraction, in the end she always comes back for 'mummy's milk'. She never took a bottle either so she's not a big fan of cows milk.

I night weaned my 2 year old recently. It went well!

I must say She was taking a lot less milk than yours during the day. But I was happy with how smoothly this went. If you could stop the feeding to sleep and night feeds, might you feel differently?

There was a 'carnival of weaning' in the blogosphere recently, you could check some of the posts out. One idea that I got from that was the idea of talking about what you're up to - for some reason that hadn't really occurred to me.