Hello fellow Breastfeeders and BF gurus.
I have been absent for some time.
Am wondering if me and my littlest have hit a wall that is unclimbable.
He is 15 months and have been continuing to feed because we both seemed to want to, he seems to need to feed lots - is doing so straight after work/nursery, before bed, first thing in the morning (6am ish) and then again before work/nursery.
But many nights, he is also feeding at 12 and 3 as well. If these night feeds would be a simple slurp and then straight back to sleep I could cope, but it is sometimes an hour of suckling until he is asleep again.
And sometimes it is an hour of screaming instead.
The bottom line is this: we have two older kids and two jobs and the night wakings are placing an enormous strain on the whole family. The middle child is feeling neglected by me, since I am always the one dealing with the baby or catching up on sleep. This is not for lack of trying alternatives: we've tried the DH going in with a cup of milk but the inconsolable fury is just not worth it: he screams for two hours then and everyone is awake. So I am wondering -given we've tried night weaning unsuccessfully, and my hunch that the more I feed the more he is reminded that he can come to me in the night and therefore won't be soothed by my other half... - is it better now just to stop completely?
It seems so brutal.
The other options - co-sleeping for example - aren't working well either: if he's in bed with me (as opposed to sat in his room in a chair feeding with me) he simply lies on top of me, feeding all night and poking or pinching me and no-one gets any sleep (he doesn't do the kind of feeding one can sleep through...)
Am really at end of tether: exhausted and getting to resent it and him sometimes.
I don't even really, rationally want to stop: I wanted to carry on to build up his immune system as the other two suffered with terrible persistent coughs and chest infections that made their first two years hell. I thought we might get a break this time and have a nice 'easy' baby! We're beginning to feel a bit victimised (ridiculous! by who?) because he is such hard work.
And my eldest child is being a royal pain also, no doubt because we are all struggling with exhaustion so he doesn't get a good deal either.
BF by this stage should be just easy, I thought. Ha ha ha.
Any ideas before I collapse in a heap somewhere. Cold turkey? Some kind of magic sleep and weaning plan? (we have the Bengtson book and the No cry sleep book and neither are giving much inspiration right now - but perhaps I am just too tired...)