Weaning

I must take a moment to praise my Heavenly Father for His infinite grace and mercy. He has been so faithful and so good to us. Most of you know the trouble that Taylor had with breastfeeding and sleeping. To sum it all up for those who don't know, my milk supply has always been low and we ended up having to supplement with formula to make sure she got enough to eat. I was afraid that I would have to stop breastfeeding altogether because I was afraid that my milk would dry up. Ever since I was pregnant I felt like God had called me to breastfeed. If you have not been a breastfeeding mother, this may sound rather strange to you, but I really felt convicted about it. I was so convicted that it was even difficult for me to start supplementing. I think I thought that if I gave Taylor formula it meant that I didn't have enough faith to believe that God would supply my milk. After learning that I was starving my child and that she was losing weight, I finally started supplementing and saw almost an immediate improvement in her growth. There were some consequences that came out of that and one of them was poor sleep habits. I won't go into the details of how that is all connected, but just know that Taylor had to be nursed to sleep and would wake up in the middle of the night to nurse for many months. Once she was about a year old we decided that it was finally time to let her cry herself to sleep. I wish we had done this much sooner, but we did have our reasons for not doing it before. The point is that after about 3 nights of letting her cry she finally started sleeping through the night and we are sleeping much better as well. I finally have my sanity back! Naps have been a different story....

It took longer to teach Taylor to go down for a nap, and at first she was just sleeping for 30 minutes at a time. Soon that 30 minutes turned into an hour. She has been taking a one-hour nap in the afternoon consistently for a couple months now. Occasionally her schedule will get off and she will only take a half-hour nap or no nap at all, but that is usually on a trip or just after a trip. I have never gotten her to take 2 naps a day consistently. I finally resigned myself to the fact that she would never be a good napper and would only take one decent nap a day. I was okay with that and thankful that she was napping at all.

Just recently when we went to Chattanooga for Mother's Day Taylor decided to change her nap schedule again. She was falling asleep in the car at 11:00 instead of 1:00 or 1:30 when her usual naptime is. She would sleep for her normal 30 minutes in the car and then be awake for the rest of the trip. While in Chattanooga I was able to nurse her to sleep but as soon as I would put her down she would wake up and start crying and there was no getting her back to sleep after that. The same thing happened when we got home. Yesterday I tried to get her down for a morning nap around 10:30 unsuccessfully, but was able to get her down for a good afternoon nap.

Well, today I decided that it was time to wean her of nursing to sleep. I am sure that she is not getting much milk from me anymore if anything at all and she is just nursing for comfort. I called my lactation consultant for weaning tips and she told me to start with the naps. We have been slowly dropping feedings for the last several months, but I knew that the times she nurses to sleep would be hardest to drop since she will not take a paci or suck on her fingers. I knew this would be difficult, so I prayed that God would give me the grace to get through the crying again. I followed her normal naptime routine and added some extras for comfort. I gave her milk to drink from her sippy cup and read her a story. We turned her sound machine on and I tried to rock her, but she would have nothing to do with that if she was not going to get to nurse. She just cried and tried to wiggle her way out of my arms. I stood up with her and started singing. I finally just laid her in her crib and let her cry it out. She cried for about 15 minutes and went to sleep. Praise the Lord! She slept for almost an hour.

After such a great morning nap I was a little bit skeptical that she would take her normal afternoon nap, but I went ahead and went through the motions as usual. We went through her naptime routine (minus the milk since she had just had lunch) and after about 10 minutes of crying she went to sleep. This time she only slept for about 40 minutes, but all in all she got about an hour and a half of sleep as opposed to just an hour, so I am very happy. I am sure she will only become a better sleeper with time. I am just so thankful to God for His faithfulness. Even though it has been difficult to let her cry (and now I am having to go through it again), God's grace is sufficient. Hopefully weaning Taylor will only get easier.