Twilight: The Nursing Years

So it's official, I live with two vampires of the milky variety. Between the two of my chilluns I've been sucked dry, mostly of my emotional sanity. Don't worry about my milk supply, I honestly think I could support triplets.

Doozer is teething/growth-spurting/mastering the new skill of pulling herself up. This leads to nursing and holding marathons. She usually sleeps long stretches at night, but because of the aforementioned reasons she is staying latched on nearly the whole night with a 1-2 hour break in the early morning.

BuggaBoo is driving me crazy with the nursing. I'm torn about this, because when I dig down deeply I know that I love our nursing relationship, but his lack of patience is wearing me thin, thin, thin. He had been eating a lot of solids a few days ago, horking down as much food as we, the parents, do, but now he is back to mostly nursing. I'm afraid to cut him off, however, because his vomiting episodes usually follow a nursing marathon.

To show you how stressed I am, here this is: Although I am a strong believer in child-led weaning I have thought about weaning BuggaBoo completely. But it's not time, his nursing need hasn't been fulfilled yet. Nursing is the most important thing to him, he'll will choose it over almost anything. He will choose it over cookies, ice cream, and frosting, which are his favorite desserts.

As more evidence I'm going to relate our night-weaning experience. When I was 3 months pregnant with Doozer BuggaBoo was about 20 months old. He was still nursing every hour or two at night and staying latched for 15-45 minutes at a time. I was exhausted from growing a new baby and decided to night-wean the boy. Our agreement was he could nurse to sleep and nurse in the morning (loosely, after 6am) but that was it. Well, it was a month of screaming and crying and holding my breasts and touching a mole on my chest (he always touches it while we nurse) and going crazy. But after the month he was night-weaned and would ask to nurse at night about once a week, which I declined.

So by the time Doozer was born he had been night-weaned for six months. He still sleeps with us on a twin bed next to our queen. Well, it started when she was born and still continues to this day: BuggaBoo hears Doozer nursing and asks to nurse. He cries when I say no. Still. It's not every night, but it's often enough to be annoying.

So, to sum up the whole story, even if I were to wean BuggaBoo right now it would be absolute hell for the both of us because I'm still nursing Doozer and he would feel (rightfully) hurt every time he saw her nurse.

So we plug along. I don't do much in the way of housework. I'm feeling pressure from some about that because doncha know that a clean house is the good mark of a mother? I feel all touched out by the end of the day, and being touched by anyone else *coughTheHubbycough* gives me the skeevies. Oh, heck, even the kids touching me gives me the all-overs. I usually can't take a bath without one or the other in there with me, nursing away and splashing water all over the book I happen to be reading at the time (I try not to take library books in with me).

But the worst part of it all is I often feel like I've cheated BuggaBoo, that we had Doozer too soon for his needs. If it was just him then we could nurse whenever, without having to share or wait or scream. Nursing wouldn't be a battle of the wills, it would be me and my baby. Sometimes I feel Doozer could have waited.

Which then makes me feel guilty, because I LOVE this little girl, and I'm so happy she's here so then I think if BuggaBoo wasn't around so much then I could just have a relationship with her, and she's being shafted because BuggaBoo can't leave me alone.

We mothers are great about bringing on the guilt trips.