For the first time last night, I said to my husband "I can't stand breastfeeding this baby!". I didn't mean forever, or that I wanted to wean. I had been nursing her for hours off and on. She sleeps for 30 minutes, maybe an hour, wakes up and wants to nurse. Sounds slightly annoying right? It's so much more then that. She screams and screams and fights me or Shane. The ONLY thing that will calm her down, is it I nurse her. I know some people would say, well then, just nurse her. This is literally a 1-2x a hour occurrence. As much as I appreciate that she's my last baby and the fact that I need to enjoy my baby, the reality is that I still have a home to clean, homework to do and dang it, I need some mama time. So nursing 2x an hour, and fighting a baby to sleep for 30 minutes to an hour every night just...well, it just freakin' sucks. And I'm tired of it.
So I've been going over different ideas as to what I can do. I don't believe in cry-it-out. I am adamantly against it. I don't believe it's healthy for babies. Although I'm not going to lie...it crossed my mind for a second. I was so frustrated, so tired, so upset and angry that I thought "maybe I should just let her cry". It was a quick thought and immediately I knew I wouldn't but a part of me wished I could. So, with CIO off the list of possibilities I started thinking about what else I could do. First of all, I'm not nursing her to sleep anymore. I'm going to nurse her and then rock her. She's very calmed by the Bee Gees...yeah, I'm not kidding. You play "More Than a Woman" for that baby...INSTANT quiet. It's like magic. And not just any music does it. It's the Bee Gees. Weird, I know, but whatever. So I brought our rocking chair in our room and I am going to rock her and play the Bee Gees for her until she dozes off. Then I"m going to lay her in a pack and play.
Up until now, we've bed shared every night from start to finish. I'm going to try to get her to sleep the first part of the night in the pack and play. I'm not 100% comfortable with this because she's only a year and I don't feel that either of us are totally ready to stop bedsharing but it's only until I go to bed, which is usually around midnight. I'm just trying to get her to sleep a 3-4 hour stretch without waking to nurse. If/when she wakes up to nurse, I will rock her back to sleep and put her back in the pack and play. I'm not night weaning at all, I'm just not nursing 1-2x an hour.
I'll keep you all updated on how this works...and it's very possible that my plans will change but for now, this is the plan. I just can't keep dealing with the hour long scream fest at bedtime and then the 1-2x an hour wakeup-to-nurse parties.
