Words of wisdom for weaning a two year old?

Since you all have great advice, I thought I'd try here for my sister. She is nursing her 2 year old daughter and would like to wean - the problem is she is nursing 4x/day (morning, after nap, bedtime and, waking up around 4:30-5 am) and nursing sometimes other times when she is tired or cranky, etc. My niece shows no desire to self-wean. My sister nursed her older child until she was about this age, but then she was pregnant with this one, and the older one self-weaned. When my sister tries to not nurse, such as this morning at 4:30, she gets a progressive "Nana, nana" to "I want to nana" to "I want to nana now!". She is not a fan of CIO for the 4:30 am wake up. Any ideas on how to wean this 2 year old who loves to nurse?


Thanks!

Erica.

 

Well, I was still nursing my 25 month olds three times a day (at wake-up, before nap & before bed) when I started to wean. I picked a feeding to stop and then hid my pillow for that feeding. I replaced it with a sippie of milk. I did the morning session first because it was the easiest. It was the one that I got the most snuggles out of, but the easiest to do. I quit a session every two weeks for my ease, but one a week would work too. Then I quit the naptime (mid day) nursing session. Same thing, hid pillow and replaced it with a sippie of milk. Then reluctantly I did the bedtime feeding. It all went great! I replaced the nighttime feeding with a good snuggle. I know dd knew something was missing, but it didn't seem to phase ds at all! Good luck to her and kudos for nursing so long! WTG Sis!

 

If it were me I would slowly wean (a feeding every 2 weeks or so) and drop everything but the 5am one and work on that one last. The other ones should involve less crying if any at all. ds had a pretty hard time with weaning down to the one feeding we are now doing. So if she has problems (tears, asking alot to bf, etc) let her know in my case he got over it in about 3 days each time I dropped a feeding.
For the 5am one, ummmmm, that is going to be tricky. I think no matter what if she is persistently asking to nurse there will some crying. I would have her dh DEFINITLY go to her, not your sister. And maybe he can say that there is no nursing, but she can have some milk.

Goodluck to her!!

 

The best way was to drop daytime feedings, they were more willing to drop those. I just redirected them when they were about to think of nursing. We're still working on the nightime waking feedings, I find those to be really tough! So I'm all ears on that... I'm supposed to be weaning and I have no idea how I am going to acomplish that!

 

Thank you for the suggestions, I will forward them to her. And the kudos - she sometimes gets worried about how long she nurses, I tell her its all good!

Erica.