Weaning Woes

Lex is now a few short days away from being 11 months old. My beautiful little blessing from God, our wonderful surprise baby, is that old already! He got his first tooth this week, and has bitten me with it twice so far. I considered having him quit nursing cold turkey in those moments. Eliz weaned herself at ten months.

10 months almost to the day, I tried to get her to nurse, and she covered my breast with both hands and looked at me like I was crazy. So, weaning isn't something I've had to go through, or at least initiate. I hadn't even thought about it, until maybe two weeks ago. I was nursing Lex, and I thought of how big , well, long, he's gotten, and it sort of came to me suddenly, he's 10 and a half months old and he's still nursing about 5 times a day! Do I really want that?

With Eliz, I had always said I would nurse her for as long as she wanted, up to 2 years old. But, well, with two, it's hard to justify going that long-especially when I know that I want to have another one very, very soon. (Don't worry, Bry-D has resigned himself to the fact that he won't be able to make me wait 5 years for the next one.) How I love nursing my children, the quiet tenderness of it, the bond and connection it gives, oh, what a blessing to feed your child! But, Lex is proving an "opinionated" child; I'm sure he would nurse until age 3 or 4, if I would let him. But that isn't going to happen, not a chance. So, I've got to start pumping my milk, and just suck it up(hhmm, didn't intend for it to sound like that..) and force him to drink from a cup. It didn't go so well today, he guzzled his first drink, then spilled the rest and cried.

On the EC front, things were going well, but EC, along with cooking and going to the grocery store, went out the window the first week Bry-D was home with his injury. I had noticed that on the days Lex tried a new food, his BM's were totally unpredictable. He's real quiet about signalling, so I did it more on a schedule, which meant I caught probably 80-90% of potty and BM's. I'm so off that schedule, and sometimes I don't realise he's signaled until he's given up and gone in his diaper. Poor guy, he must be getting confused.

I'm sure this is all hard on Eliz as well, but she's most definitely been a trooper. I'm praying for next week, getting back into our "normal" routine. If that's going to happen, I need to get in bed! G'night!