Nighttime Tandem Nursing

Dear nursing mother,

Your daughter’s night nursing is habitual and she will be very happy without it. However, you must be able to be with her when she cries. She has obviously learned from you that crying is a way to change reality. My guess is that crying gets her many things she wants. In my book, Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, I talk a lot about the importance of allowing children to vent their feelings and to feel free to express and to feel intense emotions. 

It is very important to meet babies and children’s primal needs, but, as they grow older, we don’t want to teach them than they must always have their way. We don’t want to teach them to always avoid tears. Tears are fine and are biologically her for a useful reason. Instead of teaching your daughter to avoid crying by bending reality, she needs you to stay peaceful and supportive so she can cry with a sense of peace. She needs you to stay calm and peaceful as you listen and support her.

Since you have already given up once, you may need to changer your ways in other areas of life, and to prepare her honestly for night-weaning. You can say, “Even thought we are talking now about not breastfeeding at night, when you wake up in the middle of the night, you might feel upset and cry. I will then hold you while you cry as long as you need.” Crying in mom’s loving arms about a harmless change is a developmentally healthy experience at your child’s age. 

Your daughter can breastfeed to fall asleep in the evening, but once asleep, the association of waking up and getting the breast must be eliminated to avoid confusion. Therefore, in the morning, once she is awake, you will have to get up, get both of you dressed and then sit on the couch to breastfeed, as you would during the day.

Of course, you can also keep things as they are, and make peace with your disrupted sleep. Either way, enjoy your children and embrace their needs with love. If you need further guidance, you can book a phone session with me by sining up here: http://authenticparent.com/guidance.html

Warmly, Naomi Aldort, http://authenticparent.com/index.html