Mother Encouraged Toddler Weaning

This is for me, but I thought it would be useful for others in the future.

I really like the idea of child lead weaning. And my goal for breastfeeding my singleton was two years. Now, at two years and two months old. Drex is showing no signs at all of being interested in weaning. We just had a three day weekend, and with me home with him, he seriously fed all day long! He feeds for short periods of time, except when going down for the night. So less than five minutes at a time, but rarely goes more than two hours without feeding if we are at home. I work, so he does regularly go from 7:30 to 2:30 with no access to the breast, as well as 4 to 8 pm.
I'm ready to cut out daytime feeds when home on the weekend and the afternoon feeds. I often here people talk about dirverting their toddlers attention to something else, but need ideas to put that in to practice--he's pretty stubborn when he wants something.
So how to you gently encourage a toddler to wean?

 

My oldest nursed until just past 2 and it was hard to wean. We actually did a "no more nursing" party for him. We told him that he was a big boy and he drinks from a cup. When he was sad mommy would hold him. The party wasn't anything big, just special dessert and balloons after dinner. We told him after the party, no more nursing. He was down to only comfort nursing so it didn't take too long.

 

Spencer is done. I think. He nursed the last time about a week ago. But he'd gone days without nursing quite a few times before then. But the last months we didn't nurse during the day very much at all, unless it was first thing in the morning or an emergency of sorts where he'd gotten hurt. Part of what encouraged that is that I stopped wearing a nursing bra about 6 months ago. And with the size of my breasts and the underwires in my bra, it just wasn't convenient or comfortable to nurse. I'd just tell him that I couldn't right then because it didn't work. Or sometimes I'd just say there was no milk right now. I'd get him a cup of milk or juice and encourage him to do something else like play with a toy he likes, or have one of his brothers or sisters play with blocks or legos with him. Sometimes if he was needing mama snuggle time, I'd have him get a couple books to read and we'd sit together in the recliner for awhile.

 

I had actually been afraid that weaning my daughter would be difficult (she was about 21 months old). I don't know that either my daughter or I was quite ready to wean but my doctor recommended it when she found out it was twins inside! We had already started cutting out feedings - she was STTN and I had stopped pumping at work so she drank whole milk during the day. I had 3 feedings to drop - morning, just before bed, and right after I got home from work. Basically, I dropped one feeding at a time and gave her whole milk in a cup for those feedings instead. I didn't change anything else about the routine. I still held her and she still got milk - it just came out of a cup instead of me. It actually went a lot more smoothly than I expected. I gave her a week or so between each dropped feeding to adjust (you may want to shorten that to 2-3 days if you have a bunch to drop). Best of luck!