From the moment she was born and latched perfectly for the first time I knew a beautiful journey was about to begin. The way her cloud filled eyes looked up into mine, the way her chest was perfectly aligned with mine so that I could feel every deep breath she took and every little heartbeat. We were bonded and I loved every minute of it.
As a new mother I went into everything with a plan. I KNEW I was going to breastfeed my baby for a full year and then be done after that... (you could say I was determined, and naive) HA! Little did I know the joke to last a lifetime was on me!! We don't get to make those decisions *snapping fingers* easy peasy, just like that! I learned it's a process.
Now to start you guys with some details:
If your breastfed baby doesn't take bottles EVER... I've been there.
If your baby took forever to find a sippy cup she KIND OF liked... I've been there. My daughter didn't take a sippy cup of any kind until 10 months old no matter how hard I pushed them. She just couldn't grasp the sucking motion from anything other than my breast. We had tried almost every brand you could think of until one day (after I had slowly been incorporating more solids into her diet such as puffs, bananas, potatoes etc..) I gave her one of the puree pouches with a squeeze top and she sucked form that independently while I stood by. I eventually tried the sippys with weighted straws and even now she only takes to one brand! LOL! Either way it was a winning moment for this mom.
With all that being said, it was only a matter of time before I started getting asked:
1.) "When do you plan on weaning?"
2.) "Do you think she should start drinking from a sippy cup only now?"
Both questions are only to be expected so I don't take them personal, but honestly.... I have no answer.
Even though my daughter is regularly drinking whole milk, juice, water from a sippy she still occasionally nurses and i'm fine with it.
I do plan on weaning her soon, but I feel like I should do so at HER pace.
As of now our nursing schedule is pretty smooth... she wakes up to nurse around 7 every morning followed by a breakfast and sippy cup of either milk, juice or water. She won't nurse again until after her afternoon nap followed by lunch and sippy cup.
She used to nurse 30-40 mins before I started her bed routine that way she did not become dependent on nursing before bed, but as of recently she doesn't nurse at night. We just do the three B's (bath, book, bed) and shes content.
They say it will be easy weaning once you're able to completely cut back a feeding and I feel that will be very true for us starting with the afternoon feeding first, then gradually moving to the morning.
But for now I wont stress about the "what you should do is.." and "It should take you this long.." statistics... I plan on just going with the flow and weaning as my daughter starts to show interests elsewhere.
We aren't all perfect mothers with everything all written out in a planner (and i'm definitely not trying to be) but thats okay.
Life with my little is going to be fun, full of surprises as it should be. A journey in itself. After all, if baby is happy.... mommy is happy.
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