The Wonderful World of Weaning

This post is not going to be very interesting, but I think it will be helpful to me to look back later on in life to figure out how and when I started weaning Cal Boy.....

Cal is still nursing and for the most part, I LOVE IT. He is down to 4 times a day (not including the night time "visits"), but most of those are very brief. I have also started not nursing him when he first wakes up since I nursed him more than likely in the middle of the night. He is SO active and SO busy that it is super hard to hold him still long enough to nurse. Usually we are lucky to have 10 minutes of eating. He would rather be moving, wiggling, twisting, turning, etc....

I have been talking with the doctor about weaning him down for the trip Eddie and I are taking next month sans Cal. It is about 4 weeks away. Since we are nursing about 4 times a day, it seemed like a logical time to start introducing cow's milk. I was going to put it off another day, but as I was nursing Cal before his afternoon nap, he bit me. He has bitten me before and it hurt, but now that the top teeth are coming in, it REALLY hurt. I did the same thing I had done before where I say NO and put him in the middle of the floor and he just started cracking up (lovely, right?). After trying to nurse again, with again, the same outcome, we went to plan B.

We bought some vitamin D milk in anticipation of this week, and I had some milk pumped, so I mixed breast milk with vitamin D milk in a sippy cup (maybe we could skip bottles all together??). He loved it. He drank quite a bit, but was really ready to get moving again. I let him go around the room with his sippy cup and he would take a swig and then toss it. I put it in his crib with him during nap time, and he must have tossed it somewhere because now I can't find it.....

For bed time tonight, I used the only bottle we have (!) and mixed 2 ounces of breast milk with about 5 ounces of cow's milk and rocked him as I fed him. He immediately took the bottle from me and turned it up like a wino and started chugging. He couldn't get enough! He would stop to catch his breath and smile at me and then would go right back at it!

Once he finished the bottle, I sat him in the crib and he just toppled over to fall asleep with the fullest belly you have ever seen! I went back in not even 5 minutes later (to look for the first sippy cup.....??) and he didn't even lift his head to look at me. It will be interesting to see how tonight goes sleeping wise.

I am very sad to be done with nursing (or working on being done with nursing), but I know it's time. I just love snuggling with him and I love the way he feels curled up in my arms. I love having that special time just the two of us. I love the way he looks up at me while he's eating as if he is sooooooo thankful for me (and I am looking at him the exact same way: so grateful for him).

It will more than likely take a few weeks to be completely weaned, and I am okay with that. Cal will be 10 months on Friday and I am pretty proud of myself for doing it this long. Truth be told, I would have continued nursing until a year if we weren't going away. This trip will be really helpful to me though. I have to just draw the line and if I weren't traveling, I am sure I would try and do it just one more time.....

I'll keep you posted on the weaning wars :)