weaning – Awake Parent

Wow, breastfeeding. It’s one of those things I always knew I wanted to do, but until I experienced it myself, I had absolutely NO IDEA how challenging it could be. I thought, “We’re all built for this, so it will just automatically happen and it will be easy.” Unfortunately, that was not the case for me.

Breastfeeding did happen, but it certainly wasn’t easy. For the first two weeks, my milk didn’t come in so I pumped like crazy and gave my daughter syringes filled with milk donated to us by a neighbor. If you’ve ever had to use the syringe method to supplement your breastfeeding then you know that you need about six hands to be able to accomplish it, especially when both mother and baby are new at breastfeeding. But we got through that hurdle and my daughter started gaining weight. Hooray!

The thing is, breastfeeding was extremely painful! No one told me that breastfeeding would hurt. It was so bad that I would often bite myself to keep from screaming out in pain as my daughter latched on. My La Leche League leader told me she likely had a shallow latch. My peers told me that the pain would go away after a couple of weeks. I described my symptoms but no one seemed to know why I was in pain.

As the weeks turned into months, I decided that I was just super sensitive and I would just have to learn to live with the pain. So I began to use self-hypnosis to manage my pain. I had learned how to hypnotize myself for and it worked pretty well to help me relax, even when I was experiencing discomfort. I would lie on my side, take a deep breath, turn off (relaxing every muscle in my body), and after that the pain was bearable.

We nursed like that for 8 more months. And then I wrote a blog post about how I was hypnotizing myself to get through the pain of nursing. One of my readers left a comment about how I shouldn’t be having so much pain and I might want to look into Raynaud’s phenomenon of the nipple. Well, after a quick Google search I finally figured out why I was in so much pain, I was having vasospasms in my nipples that made nursing extremely painful. I was SO RELIEVED to have an explanation for my pain!

Vasospasm can be caused by cold and/or emotional distress, as well as some nutritional deficiencies so the first thing I did was begin to cover up with a warm blanket every time I nursed. I also researched some herbal vasodilators and found that red pepper and cinnamon both help to open and relax blood vessels. I started to put red pepper on my eggs in the morning and I used cinnamon in my oatmeal. I cut out caffeine, took my vitamins, began to get more regular with my aerobic exercise and I got some acupuncture. After several weeks my pain went away!

For the first time since my nine-month-old daughter was born, I nursed pain free. I wish that was the end of the story and for almost a year I did continue to nurse pain free. But a few months ago, the vasospasms returned and the pain was worse than ever. I contemplated weaning because the pain was so intense and my daughter was nearing two years old. But I didn’t like the idea of weaning because of my vasospasm, it seemed too abrupt and when I’m not in pain, I really enjoy nursing my daughter! I had hoped to wean slowly and have her weaned at around 2 ½ yrs old. The herbs weren’t cutting it this time so I went ahead and called my OB/GYN and got a prescription for a very low dose of blood pressure medication that has been shown to work for Raynaud’s of the nipple. It worked!

I’m pain free again! The only problem is, I’m taking medication to stay that way. I tried going off the medication when I thought things were under control, but the pain came back and now I’m back on the meds. It does seem strange to me to be taking medication so that I can slowly wean my daughter.

I thought I would do child-led weaning, but it certainly hasn’t worked out that way for us. I have led the weaning efforts, starting with night weaning and getting down to just three times a day now. My daughter has adjusted beautifully. But she definitely doesn’t want to give up her “milka” any time soon. Has anyone else out there gone through something similar? Any thoughts about how I should proceed? Doesn’t it seem strange to be taking medication so that I can continue to nurse? I would love some support, suggestions, and information. So please leave me a comment!

And have a lovely week, Shelly

When I first began studying child development I thought things happened in a pretty linear fashion. First you learn to crawl, then you walk, after that you learn to talk and so on. And if you study information about ages and stages, you can come to the same misinformed conclusion.

But after 20 years of experience with young people, I can tell you for certain, learning is not linear. Children might learn and grow in one area and retreat and regress in another and they can do it all at the very same time. When we forget about the non-linear life experience of learning and growing, we set ourselves up for disappointment and we have unrealistic expectations of our children.

I’m sure you’ve experienced the complete exasperation of staring at your child who could tie her shoes yesterday, but is in a teary puddle on the floor today. Or you’ve seen your toddler go in and out of diapers over the past year. Or maybe you’ve seen your baby feed himself successfully a total of one time.

We tend to get so excited about the developmental milestones that we sometimes forget that there’s an actual person reaching for them. And a person is a hugely complex individual. Lots of factors can impact learning and growth, not the least of which is stress. Unfortunately, children today are experiencing far more chronic stress than our biology has been required to deal with in times past.

I recently read a longitudinal study (I can’t remember exactly where) that showed that when people had grown up in an urban environment, they had more stress hormones in their system as adults when compared with children who grew up in a more rural setting. The conclusion of the study was that the stress of our childhood directly impacts our lifelong release of stress hormones.

Now I’m not trying to give you a guilt trip of you’re raising your kids in an urban environment. There are plenty of benefits to an urban lifestyle. But my point is that children are multidimensional and things like stress can greatly impact learning.

For a child, even a change of routine can be enough to trigger a regression of some kind. And then there are the regressions that seem to come out of nowhere and which we can’t seem to tie to any particular event or experience. The thing is, children are just doing their best to learn and grow in every moment, and sometimes that looks like retreating or regressing into a safer, more familiar experience, like wearing diapers, or baby talk.

OK, so why am I writing about this today? Well, I’ve been working toward night weaning my daughter and it has been a bit of a rocky road. I say working toward because I have been resolving to night wean and then changing my mind for the past month. I know she’s not a fan of the weaning plan and she lets me know that repeatedly and loudly. But I also know that I’ll be a happier mom when I can get a full night’s sleep in bed with my wonderful husband, rather than co-sleeping with my daughter and nursing all night long. And lately it has literally been ALL NIGHT LONG. I’m exhausted.

Meanwhile, my daughter has been learning to read (whoa!) and learning geography at a level I would expect of a six or seven year old. But she still wants to nurse about ten times a day (and all through the night). So, that’s why I needed the reminder that even as a child excels in one area, he might need a little bit of extra time, attention, snuggles and care in some other areas.

And if you think I’m kidding about the geography, here’s a video we recorded to prove her abilities to my brother:

Have you noticed the non-linear nature of learning? How does this show up at your house? I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment!

And have a fantastic week, Shelly

Tag: weaning

I put myself into hypnosis to deal with the pain of breastfeeding

Learning is NOT Linear: The Ebb and Flow of Learning & Growing, Retreating & Regressing