Nursing It

I love to recycle, so I will regurgitate this post to a hippie-freak slow & no vaccinations e-list for your enjoyment. It is a response to a mom who wanted advice on weaning her 13 months old so that she could have some resentment-free personal space, and who was afraid of the attachment parenting boards' flaming swords:

Kudos to you for figuring out that you need to be happy and create your own space in order to be a good mother. I do not know if you have heard of Brain, Chi1d magazine, but the last issue had a good editorial on just how incendiary & political nursing can be.

A friend of mine recently lost her battle with post-partum depression. One of the factors her partner suspects is that she continued taking a lactation hormone known to exacerbate depression because of the societal pressure to continue nursing.

Anyone who can't consider the needs of both the child and the parent when making decisions about nursing deserves a swift kick in the ass, in my opinion.

In terms of advice, we eliminated one nursing at a time over the course of a few weeks. The last ones, the nap time/bed time ones were the worst (my son was nursing every two hours all night long). We had a guest bedroom at the time, so I took him into that room so the rest of the family wouldn't hear his hollering and cuddled but did not nurse him through two sleepless nights. It broke my heart, but like you I was growing resentful and I felt that was interfering with my ability to be the best mother I could be. From that point on he was weaned even though he continued to sleep with us for another year.

=Squid