Attachment parents/extended breast feeders please

[AngelaD]

My DD aged 2 is showing no sign of stopping and it is driving me nuts to the point I don't want her near me because she'll want to feed all the time.
It starts at bedtime about 8pm and she feeds from one side and pinches the other nipple and rolls it between her fingers (drives me up the bloody wall), then when I get into bed at 11pm she wakes for another feed until she nods off. At about 3am we have a big fight because she wants feeding and I lie on my front so she can't get to it and she screams until she falls asleep again until 6am when it all starts again.
I'm sat here on the computer and she's literally hanging off my boob it, she's not hungry she's just had 2 weetabix and a piece of toast for god sake.
As soon as I sit downn she's got her hand up my top clawing at my bra to get to me, I've got to the point where I hate it.
What's the kindest way to stop this ?

thanks ruty, but none deserved - just to lazy to do anything other than let things happen in their own time. (apart from that darned twiddle thing):o

LOL 10 foot futon is a super kingsize futon (6 foot) plus a double (4 foot 6) so in fact we have 10 and a half foot of futon :o

We started off with the super kingsize but always ended up sleeping in the same 3 foot of it, crammed together with ds in my armpit.

A friend offered us their old futon as a spare, so we thought we'd try an emperor size bed instead :o

This thread is great - I love hearing stories of 3yr olds who bf and co-sleep yet grow out of it by themselves, with no cc! This extended bf malarkey can be hard work but it is nice to feel supported and encouraged every so often, rather than criticised.
AngelaD I hope you find the right solution for you...

Hello! Angela this is an exact thread i could have written a year or so ago!

I am now have a happy 3 yr old who sleeps in her bed and doesn't breastfeed, but will twiddle a nipple if she's ever near one .

I think my technique was talking to her - i drummed it in that now she was grown up she didn't need my milk, talked about it a lot with her. Each time she'd feed i'd say you don't really need that and after a while, she'd start laughing when she'd go to feed and then not have any. It was a long slow process, but she did basically miss so many feeds that my milk dried up and that was that. There were no tears and she still remembers feeding from me.

When I was considering night-weaning my dd1 when she was 1.9 I read on an AP website "If you resent it, stop doing it". She was sleeping VERY badly, waking every half hour sometimes and wanting feeds. I was 6 months pg and finding it all too much. So I weaned her off the night time feeds. We explained to her that she would have cuddles instead of milk during the night. Dh put her to bed for the first week or so, and sat with her and cuddled her til she was asleep. It was tough for the first few days, but after that it got much better. She still came into our bed if she woke after we were in bed - but within a few weeks she was sleeping through most nights.

She continued feeding in the daytime, though not as frequently as your dd. DD2 was born and I continued feeding dd1 in the daytime. For the first few months I enjoyed feeding both of them, but then I began to find it a bit irritating feeding dd1 sometimes and felt a bit 'touched out'. So I limited the length of dd1's daytime feeds when I wanted to, by telling her "I'm going to count to 10, then you'll stop feeding." Sometimes she would feed for 20 minutes or so before I counted to 10; other times the feed would just last for the count of 10. That usually worked pretty well - sometimes she got a bit upset, but usually she would come off of her own accord before I reached no. 10.

Getting out of the house can also help - with distraction and entertainment they are less likely to keep demanding feeds.

dd1 continued feeding until she was nearly 3, but she asked less and less often until she had weaned herself.

Hope this helps a bit.

You are quite within your rights to set boundaries - she's old enough to understand that she can't have everything she wants and bfing should be something you both enjoy, not a source of tension.

I think if you are following an attachment style of parenting you will probably have a pretty good idea of when your child is able to cope with changes. The first time I tried to introduce night weaning, ds was so upset at the very idea that I knew it was too early for him. We are still not completely night weaned but more recently we felt it was time to let him learn to go to sleep by himself, after a breastfeed, and this worked really well. Your own instincts and knowledge of your child will tell you when is the right time.

I found getting out of the house during the day was useful too.

I was having a bad day and a moan - sorry, I don't want to throw her out of my bed, just cut down on the day feeds i guess.
The trouble with going out during the day is that when I return she's really stressed out and you can physically see her calm down as she feeds.
Poor little soul, it's not much to ask is it, I feel really rotten now.

don't feel bad AngelaD - I know it can be tiring. Maybe do ring the La Leche League -they've helped me loads in the past, and they have great local volunteers. mind you, mumsnet is almost as good! Its just the LLL are in RL and on the end of the phone...

I did call the LLL I could hear her children in the background and felt awful for wittering on anyway back to business now.

This is such a great thread to have, we need more stuff like this talking up the positives of not doing controlled crying, baby led feeding, etc.

Angela, you are doing really well, btw, just to get to 2. With ds I stopped at 14 months, for various reasons but largely because everyone told me there was no benefit to him in continuing and I had no counter information. Becuase of threads like this, dd will get a better deal!

I fed DD# for 6 weeks because my mother was worried she wasn't getting enough milk :(
DD#2 stopped at 6 months because she was a big baby and the HV said it was ridiculas to be "still doing that".
With DD#3 I was so bloody determined but it just goes to show you have to have three kids to get the confidence to tell everyone else to shove their CC and bottles where the sun doesn't shine and I have a degree and extremely supportive husband, some people just wouldn't stand a chance.
And DD#3 has just potty trained herself and has the vocab of a four year old at 2 and 1 month :o

DS is 2y7m and we are still bf (never have co-slept, DS was a prefer his cot baby from day 1!). I was finding it very hard as he was feeding up till very recently up to 10-20 times a day and whenever I sat down he was there.

I started making a point of feeding him only upstairs whilst sitting on my bed, he got fed up with that being boring so will only really ask for a feed and to 'go upstairs' when he really wants milk.

Worked for us anyway!

BFing is a consensual thing. That means you have a say in it too. If you don't want to do it you have to say, 'No' otherwise is ceases to be enjoyable, which would be a shame.

Can you say, 'No. Not now' and always stick to it so she knows not to try when you don't feel like it?

BTW, well done you for getting so far.

I am loving this thread
btw I wanted to say that I am still bf my 3 year old and just about every day I am glad I am
That is not to say that there haven't been low points, when I was feeling very sick at the beginning of pregnancy, in the postnatal period for example but it is such a wonderful and useful thing. She still gets such a lot out of it - emotionally and nutritionally. She was recently quite poorly with chickenpox and stopped eating and drinking for several days and she still bf which was such a relief to me. and we have had NO sibling rivlary - NONE at all. I am not saying the two are connected but she is a very confident and secure child.
so I think what i am saying is - it is worth keeping going. If it means sticking out a difficult phase or setting limits, then I would recommend that.

:)

Really nice to hear other Mums are out there "doing it". I am still BFing my DD, she will be 2 in July. All I hear is "you're not still feeding", "you can't feed her any longer", "you should do X, Y, Z". It does my head in!

My DS self weaned earlier but weaned off of bottles at about 2 and stopped cosleeping earlier but he did it all in his own time and I am sure my DD will do the same but is jsut taking longer about it.

Get really peed off with people telling me what I should and should not be doing when my DD and my body don't agree!

and at what your HV said about dd2 AngelaD! God knows where they get their info from. Well done for getting so far this time. I never thought i would be breastfeeding this long but am very glad I am. I'm hoping to continue through pregnancy [when we finally pluck up the courage to go for another] but I just don't know how it will work. Makes sense to breastfeed both to help eclipse sibling rivalry though HC.
Aviatrix - i saw that article - up to 5 it recommends!! I will look at your thread.

I found that with potty training Angela and others... it was seamless cos dd did it according to her own cues and not mine or others expectations.

off to find that thread aviatrix

I'm having this problem with ds, who is 19 mths. I still co sleep and breast feed on demand and it can get totally knackering. At the moment, he is teething and he goes totally off food but wants to feed constantly.

I do manage to avoid the fiddling though as I wear a breastfeeding necklace, I was determined that ds wouldn't be fiddling with me as dd1 pinched my neck and ds1 used to flick my ears, even now I can't stand anyone touching my ears!

Every now and again I do think I've had enough and perhaps I should stop, but I'm too lazy to try and conveniently it also means he can't go on over night stays at xp's just yet. I probably sound selfish but ds isn't complaining.

My ds will be 3 in August and we are co-sleeping/demand breastfeeding. If it's any consolation, it does seem to be the case that they, eventually, wean themselves. I thought he would have done it ages ago tbh and until about 2 months ago, I was feeding him three or four times a night, which was actually an improvement on his younger days, when it was anything up to about seven times.

Just recently he has started sleeping through. I don't know how much I had to do with it; it's difficult explaining things to him as he's not really talking yet. I did use distraction techniques during the day which seem to work if he's actually thirsty, but don't if he wants a cuddle. He's not a 'tweaker' but he does like to slap my boobs around a bit sometimes; I warn him once, and if he continues I lift him off and explain that he can't have 'milkins' if he hurts them. He is instantly well-behaved at the threat of no milkins!

At nights I have tried the cuddle, soothe, turn-your-back technique. I have no dh/dp so it's difficult. I have never particularly wanted to wean completely, but the total lack of sleep got me down sometimes, as well as the often claustrophobic feelings induced by having a heftly toddler climbing all over me, messing around a lot of the time. I think it's fine to let them know, when they're ready, that as they grow up they can learn to do without the breast at every juncture. Ds has only recently been ready; until very recently, denying the breast at night would just turn into prolonged crying and fitful, broken sleep. I got better rest by feeding five times a night! But lately he has seemed to realise that he can go back to sleep without having a feed. Don't think anything has particularly changed; he's just growing up.

Hope this offers some support: it will get better! And for now you are doing great things for your child!