M has weaned, and I sometimes can’t even believe it. It happened about a month ago, at age 5 years and 1 month. I wasn’t sure it was going to stick for a while there, so I haven’t written about it until now. We actually talked about it the other night, too. For a few weeks I had been afraid to talk to him about it. Part of me was sad, and I wasn’t able to say it out loud. The other part was glad, and afraid that if I mentioned it that he would change his mind. But the other night, as we all read in bed, he told me that now he was too big to nurse anymore. I reminded him that now we have other ways of being close and showing our love, like hugging and cuddling in bed at night. I asked him if he remembered the times when we nursed, and if he had good feelings about those times. He said yes. With those words, I feel that I’ve been successful.

I’ve gone through different phases of nursing M. When M was 2 1/2 , I was definitely not ready for him to wean. I remember calling an LLL Leader when I was thinking about getting pregnant with J and worrying if the pregnancy would cause M to wean. Not to worry. Other than night-weaning in pregnancy (totally self-led), he never showed any sign of letting up. Regardless of my pregnancy-induced lack of milk, he nursed on!

I wasn’t ready to wean during the first year of tandem nursing either, and either was M. We kept going and negotiated along the way as best we could. But sometime after M turned 4, I began to think I was really ready for him to wean. It was hard for me to admit it to myself at first. I truly believed in child-led weaning (and I still do), and I had spent a lot of cherished moments nursing my son. But my feelings changed. M’s latch changed sometime after he was 4, and I found it really hard to physically tolerate the sensation. It wasn’t painful, just intensely irritating in a way that I can’t really describe. I tried to improve his latch, but it wasn’t working. Unfortunately, I knew that M was absolutely not ready to wean. We even talked about it a few times, and he made his feelings very clear. So I did my best to put my own feelings aside and make the best of the last years of our nursing relationship. Even though it was sometimes hard for me to put his needs first, I’m glad I did.

M and I had many wonderful times of nursing together, and I will always cherish them. If he does remember any of them into adulthood, I think those memories will be filled with love.