Just Something I Need To Get Off My Chest

Why is it there’s very little help when it comes to getting kids OFF our boobs?

I find myself in the very same place I landed back in 2019. And almost the same place I was waddling back in 2017. One of my children won’t leave my nipples alone.

In 2017 I encouraged a reluctant Milo to give up the gold top, while pregnant with his brother. Milo was 2 and a half, fed only during the night if he woke up and needed comfort, and I was knackered. We ended on a high; literally. Like 35,000 feet high. His last feed was travelling from Heathrow to Arizona. Thanks to a BA sale and only having one child, we were in 1st class. It was truly the fanciest last hurrah (just like to take this moment to state flying 1st class has happened that singular ONE time and one time only before you get a skewed perception of the lifestyle I lead).

For some inexplicable reason, I had a small child AND time to apply fake eyelashes

I think it was the pregnancy hormones and the fact I’d just come out of an awful period of Hyperemesis Gravardium where the daily grind of breastfeeding a nibbly toddler while vomiting over his head in to a bowl was misery personified, but the transition seemed easy for both of us. I noticed no change to my own mental health and while Milo put up a little resistance, it was nothing that couldn’t be solved with some digger role play before bedtime and 12 books. After a couple of days he’d forgotten my chest was even an area code he headed for and I felt thrilled with the fact I could now wear high neck tops and have cuddles because he wanted a cuddle… not because he was about to take a detour to Areola Town. As a woman who was already by this point 6 months pregnant, I felt like I could have a bit of ‘my body’s my own’ time before a newborn arrived and jumped back on them.

Second time around however, it was another story. There was no 1st class flight for starters; we instead ended our journey in his new, big boy bedroom which he shared with his brother, one oddly warm autumnal day. Not awful but there was no cutesy meal on a tray or a woman handing you champagne. Instead their dad, my partner, was ill with some sort of weird almost-a-tummy-bug so couldn’t help and the resistance our son put up was less resistance and more fury, rage and savagery. He ricocheted his head off his bedroom wall to the tune of ‘BOOOO NUNIGHT’ (his affectionate name for feeding) repeatedly and screamed himself to exhaustion, eventually sleep. It was quite honestly and I say this with no exaggeration, harrowing. Cold turkey felt heartless and cruel, but not needlessly so. We’d already tried the softly softly approach and it hadn’t given us the results we desperately needed. I was worn down by tiredness and a toddler who still ‘fed’ (although I suspect it was just dust and air in there) repeatedly throughout the night. I was sharing a single bed with him and felt like I was broken when I woke up most mornings. Like a mangled accordion, all floppy and making odd noises. Starting to resent such a beautiful thing really got me down so the only option left was hitting the discontinuation of it hard.

One time where I road tested a dummy & he stared at me like a serial killer ‘til I removed it

I unloaded my anguish on social media and had so many messages from other mums who’d had to take this route themselves. According to the majority, 3 nights seemed to be the most it would take, and once those 3 days were done, your boobs were free to be defunct and your child stopped screaming for them to work. And 3 days was indeed accurate for our situation. It was an absolutely miserable 3 nights mind you and I silently seethed I didn’t have another adult on hand to help me because he was still ill but we got it done and despite replacing ‘boo nunight’ with ‘boonanas’ (bananas, one day he ate 7), we clawed ourselves out of it relatively unscathed. So I thought. He still loved me and hopefully wouldn’t need therapy. At least not for that specific reason anyway.

But then a few weeks down the line, I realised despite the extra hours of uninterrupted sleep, I wasn’t feeling any more alive. In fact, I felt worse. Heady; like I was trudging through a fog, not sad but not… anything. My emotions for sadness or worry or excitement or happiness were all the same. Intertwined and a muted, swamp-like brown. If I wanted to genuinely feel anything, I had to experience it behind a foggy veil with an air of tiredness. Just going through the day was wearing me out and I think I yawned more than I blinked. I took a few photos of my natural, resting face one day… now when I look back at them I look soulless.

Alongside this came a tidal wave of anxiety like I’d never had before. It took away my ability to walk my child to school, to be able to rest comfortably at home without a rising bubble in my chest, rendered me dizzy and hot most of the day. I worried I was ill and just didn’t know it. I was so infuriated I wasn’t getting the results I felt I deserved after struggling for such a long time with seeing to the needs of a young child morning, noon and night.

Short story short, I ended up going on a low dose of medication and everything righted itself after a few months thankfully. I don’t think I had the capacity to connect the dots until a while down the line but once I did, it was very clear that at some point the decline in two of the feel good hormones (Oxytocin and Prolactin) meant my body probably wondered what the bloody hell was going on. I’d heard of depression being linked to weaning but after an easy ride first time around, I’d never thought it might affect me personally and might be the reason my world suddenly became so very small and sad for a few months.

Boob always helps post injury. Which was every 4 days with our middle child

With my daughter now 2 years and 9 months, she still feeds to sleep of a night time. While she doesn’t wake often throughout the night, her comfort of choice if she does is again, boob… and I definitely think it’s time to start inching her off, mainly for my sanity. This time however, I’ve got an uneasy feeling lurking in the background, one which leaves me anxious to start the process. I’m in a similar situation, sadly… knackered because I’m still bedsharing and waking in the night and conscious trying to gently coax her to give it up a little isn’t working all that well. There’s so much help and advice (as there should be) when it comes to getting started with the breastfeeding but next to none when we just want to know how the bloody hell to get them off without us all crying/tearing our nipples off/wondering if our kids should be eating quite that many bananas in 24 hours. It feels quite a lonely place to be and a strange thing to talk about. Particularly when it’s often met with people spitting out their Coke Zero and half-shouting ‘you’re still feeding?! How OLD is she/he?’ If she was looking in to organising her first mortgage I’d understand it but she’s still only quite small really. There’s a bit of weirdness around anything over a year and even further weirdness when you admit your body’s making you feel sad about giving it up. We’re not all desperate to keep our babies little, I promise you. It’s just really quite hard to force yourself to do something you know could be actually really un-fun and sad for both your own mental health and a human you love more than yourself.

So anyway, that’s where I am right now. Kind of feeling a bit crappy because I’m worn out and need to really get some proper sleep for the first time in nine years but also reluctant to throw us both in to something. I’d really, really love it if at least one of my kids were the sort to be like ‘nah I’m good on the nursing front now cheers’ and made the decision for us. With that looking less and less likely I’ll just, at some point, bite the bullet and encourage another way to soothe. Maybe this time it’ll be grapefruit but hopefully not 7 of them.