I think that I am ready to wean and yet I really don’t want to wean. My nipples are so sore with this pregnancy that nursing is just horrible and every time she latches and pulls off I want to scream. She is so active at night after Smug-Hub gets home, she is excited to see him and they play and wrestle and it’s great. He thinks that more of this heavy play will wear her out and I feel like it just revs her up more. I don’t know, but when it is time for bed and we get in our pajamas and brush our teeth and wash our faces and then we read books (or try to, she is generally too active to sit still, she wants to jump on the coffee table instead). Then we lay down and nurse, but she is still so wide awake and she wants water and to blow her nose and to call out the names of all the people she loves and I have to tell her that they are each asleep. She unlatches for each of these little things and then has to latch back on and that is so painful!
She is only nursing to fall asleep and sometimes if she gets really hurt, and she is nursing for shorter periods. Last night when she woke up at 2:30, she simply climbed into bed and snuggled up to me and went back to sleep without nursing, so I feel like we are heading in the right direction with a slow and gentle weaning process, but the pain combined with my constant exhaustion makes me really want to smack her! At one point last night, she latched on and it hurt so badly that I bit my arm to keep from screaming and I actually have a bruise!
I don’t know what to do to help her fall asleep at night without nursing. It is how she has fallen asleep her whole life and she isn’t old enough to understand that the Binky’s hurt and she can’t have them anymore. She wouldn’t understand why all of a sudden something she has counted on her whole life is suddenly gone and I am afraid that ripping it away from her will have a lasting impact on her psyche.
Smug-Hub has wanted to wean for a really long time now and while he is trying really, really hard to be supportive, I can see in his face that he wants to shout “I told you so” from the rooftops. He doesn’t really have any better ideas on how to make it happen. He thinks that we need to wear her out with really hard play in the evenings and then give her some food right before bed and then just try to get her to be so tired that she just drops without needing to nurse. Somehow I don’t think that will work and besides, I can’t be up until all hours of the night waiting for her to get tired enough to fall asleep! I need to get to bed so I can get up at 4:30 and go to work!!
What I would like is for the pain to stop so I could continue to nurse until she is ready to stop. I just don’t know of any way to get the pain to stop until the baby is born. She is obviously heading that way, but not ready to stop yet and I hate the idea of forcing it. I just don’t know if I can deal with this pain anymore – it actually hurts to have the shower water hitting them in the mornings! Its really bad!!
I don't know what the right thing to do is. If I keep nursing through the pain, will I be less patient with Smug-Baby? If I wean harshly, will she suffer long-term effects to her self-esteem? I just want to rub on a numbing cream or something, but I don't think even that would work...
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