My breastfeeding journey of 22 months has finally come to an end. Although, I still can’t believe that I made it so long. I never thought my body could do so much. There were many times when I had thought of giving up. Those were tough times when my son would be nursing every half an hour. Nights were very short and sleepless as he would sleep for hardly 2 hours at a stretch. Still together we made it. Some of this is because of his persistence which made me do it.

It took me four weeks to finally wean. When I started, on the third day itself I was crying, thinking my son will hate me for weaning him. I got too emotional. Then after a week, I got 4 hours of sleep at night which was too much for me ever since I was in my third trimester. I felt fresh and energetic that day. I was able to handle my son well even though he missed his nap.

Before I started weaning, me and my husband did a lot of ground work, to make sure our son could sleep on his own. When he was around 18-19 months, I would walk him around our block in a stroller for his nap. The moment I transferred him on to the bed, he would wake up, I would nurse him then. Similarly for nights, we would take him on a drive while he was in his car seat. If he refused to sleep, we got him home, nursed and put him to sleep.

The reason behind this was to make him comfortable sleeping on his own. But mid night feeds never stopped, he used to wake up like crazy. Sometimes, even after nursing for an hour he would not go back to sleep. It got worse and my sleeping pattern got messed up. I was lazy and sleepy and grumpy all day and night.

My husband couldn’t help me much in this given his weekly schedule. We then started it as a 3 night plan (fri-sun). And it worked. He used to put him to sleep if he got up.

I am sad I couldn’t touch the 2 year mark. But I had to do it for my sanity and for both my husband and our little son. Thanks a bunch to the Breast Feeding Support group, I read a lot of posts about breastfeeding and other wonderful mother’s journey. It was encouraging and inspirational for our journey. 🙂 My advise to breastfeeding moms is hang in there, if I could do I am sure you too can.

–              Alarmathi Tanej –

An IT professional turned stay at home mom who loves to challenge herself with new tasks everyday and is a mom of an adorable two year old kid.