After 4 years THE BOOBS ARE FREE! Our Weaning Journey || Mom Life

One of my biggest fears, when my doctor told me I needed a C-section, was the fact that breastfeeding wouldn’t be as easy and from stories I heard, sometimes it made it even impossible. So, when that baby was pull out of my womb I was freaking out I need him to latch on to me like a leech!

Here is the thing I live in Venezuela and my baby was born during the worse of our economical crisis, so buy formula was not an option, if he wasn’t able to breastfeed I would have to I don’t know sell him to buy the formula LOL, I laugh now but to be honest at the time it was terrifying to think.

The first day

After I got out of the OR no more than 10min went by and the nurse brough me the little guy, and as I said above the first thing besides kissing him and just cry from looking at him we did was try and get him to breastfeed, and well the little guy was lazy and didn’t want to suck 🫠 this made our fist day and night a LIVING HELL, I didn’t get any sleep, he cried all night, I was worry and it was awful all around I thought I sucked as a mom and well we were actually seeing how to buy a freaking formula to no let him die.

Then we got home and OMG, let me tell you having a C-section is not joke the worse, you are in pain and cant move around as easily, everything is uncomfortable and awful, so when we got home and after I took a shower in my own bathroom and was able to sit comfortable in my own bed, I was like a brand new woman and I decided to try it again the whole feeding, in my opinion he was on the brink of death since he hadn’t feed since he was born (fear no the pediatrician had told us that by me manually extracting drops of breastmilk into his mouth it was enough since he was just a day old).

The Leech was born

A major key and an advice I always give new moms when they are going to breastfeed is to BE CONFORTABLE, as soon as I sat down with him on the bed and I was comfortable and put him on my breast the little guy completely transformed himself from a sweet baby into a leech that would take me 4 years and 4 months to get ride off.

The bond

I know any mom loves their kid no matter if they breastfeed or not, but all those hours of carry him not only next to me looking into my eyes but having him nourished from me was a NEXT LEVEL connection, It made me feel so much more powerful to know I could keep him alive, I could feed him and make him healthy it was a powerful feeling to have. Also, every time the kid cried for anything all I had to do to make him quiet was stick the boob in his mouth LOL.

The benefits

I'm not going to list all the benefits that breastfeeding brings to a child and to the mom, because you can just google them, but I'm going to talk about the ones I saw on my child and on myself.

1. He didn’t get not even a cold, thankfully the first time the kid got sick was because of something he ate when he started solid foods and the first time he got a cold was when he was 3 years old. So, yeah, nobody can tell me breastfeeding my kid didn’t protect him, keep in mind he is a pandemic baby also, and he never got Covid either.
2. It made him a little chubby but in a healthy way little man, to be honest when he was born he was skinny, like skin to the bone skinny, so it was the boobs job to inflate him into the little Michelin baby he turn into, since it was a pure breastmilk fatty it was completely healthy and was not obese in a way it could impact his health.
3. When he got older and was supposed to start eating solid food and he decided he was ready the boobs kept him fed.
4. Even now as a 4-year-old he is still a picky eater (granted probably cause he still was breastfed) he kept growing and according to his doctor was beyond the percentile for his age thanks to the boobs job.
5. On my end I would say the biggest thing for me was the bounce back after having him that happen to my body, I went from 80Kg back to 55Kg in less than a month without any exercise, now this also can be taken into the cons of breastfeeding.

The cons of breastfeeding

As before I'm going to talk from my experience only, if you want the medical and scientific facts look them up, tho to be honest I doubt they even exist.

1. The attachment my kid had to me, I even made a post about this The Mental Struggles of Breastfeeding don’t get me wrong I LOVE my kid and could spend all day stuck to him in a bear hug and never get tired, but, I felt like I was no longer a woman but had turned into a feeding machine and omg that can be mentally challenging.
2. Like I said in benefit number 5 above I got to lose weight so fast, it was fantastic… at first, then it got ugly and actually the first time I saw myself in a mirror after losing so much weight, I got really scare, I went from a size 12 in pants to 0 in a matter of days I would say it took me less than a month to go from 55Kg my ideal weight to 45kg, it was scary.

1. MY BOOBS! I always have had big boobs so, is normal for them to no be perky and up cause of the weight but omg they are beyond stretch now is sad I would need a boob job to have them back in a decent place lol.
2. The kid didn’t want to eat anything, breastfeeding is recommended to be the main source of food for kids until 1 year old, you can start introducing other foods around 6 months old and but beyond the year mark they need to have other source besides the breastmilk cause they are growing and the requirements are greater, well my kid didn’t want anything to do with food until he turned 3 years old and is still now at 4 a picky eater who can spend all day eating breakfast if you let him. The pediatrician did told us it was because of the breastfeeding, but since he was growing healthy we didn’t saw the need to stopped it, but now I kind of regret it a bit cause omg HE IS PICKY on a next level kind of thing.
3. He doesn’t sleep alone, since we got from the hospital when he was born, it was easier for me to just do the co-sleeping thing cause that allowed me to not having to get up while recovering from the c-section and also allowed me to have a good night sleep cause whenever he got up for food I would just stick the boob in his mouth and he would fall right back to sleep. As he has gotten older and bigger this means I have constant foot kicks in my ribs in the middle of the night, I suffer from back pain from the ways I have to contour myself to sleep next to him and sleep with a fear of falling of the bed cause even tho we have a queen size bed he takes the whole thing to himself and let me in the corner.
   Yes, this also means his dad even tho he sleeps in the room with us, has been sleeping in a tween bed next to us because we don’t fit all in the same bed.

a Weaning process that took years

From the start I knew I didn’t want to end breastfeeding until the kid let it go on his own, I know there are months who do only 3 months, others do the recommended 6 months and some mark the line at 1 year, they start putting stuff in their breasts or just cut the supply little by little until they completely cut it out, like I said I was clear on what I felt was best for us.

Letting him decided when enough was enough, little did I knew he would never get enough! Like for real if I would let him, he would still be attach to the boob right now.

When he turned 2 years, I started thinking well maybe he is older now and will grow out of it, no, nope nothing happened. Since I'm a Stay at home mom, it was in the middle of the pandemic and we didn’t spend much time apart at all it was difficult to even try anything at this point.
He turned 3 and even started preschool, here I thought well he is now away from me for a long period of time (while at class) so that should help him detach from the boobs, nope, again nothing, he did started feeling more ashamed from letting people know he still was breastfeeding, but like I said nothing much change he only didn’t took the milk when he was at school but as soon as he got home he would ask for it.

Then the 4 years came* and well, he grow even more aware that older kids didn’t drink breast milk and was even ashamed if his dad saw him drinking it, but still he would drink it any time of day whenever he wanted it he would ask for it, that is when I started thinking well we need to do something about it, we started with only night feeds, we talk and I told him how old kids only took it for sleep and nothing more. Then we moved into the one night yes and one night nope, this was hard for him especially since he used it for sleep, as soon as he latch onto me he would fall sleep and without it he didn’t actually knew how to fall sleep 🫠

Hormones and Medical recommendations

Until 2 weeks ago when I went to the doctor cause my period has been extremely inconsistent, going months without it coming at all, when my doctor looked at my ovaries it turns out I have what she called a multifollicular ovaries, and she says it is highly probable caused by the breastfeeding cause my hormones are obviously being affected by it, she told me I needed to cut the breastfeeding completely so she can do the proper tests in a few months if I still have this issue and for that I can be affected by the prolactin hormone that is making my body go crazy.

So, that night I had a talk with my son who is obviously older now and understand a bit better especially when you try and explain everything to him (he had so much questions) and in short I told him that we needed to say good bye to the boobies cause feeding him was hurting mommy and well obviously he doesn’t wants anything bad to happen to me.

2 weeks have gone by

And nothing we haven’t breastfeed at all, we still sleep together cause I cant break 2 things at once, I don’t think I could take it even if he could.
I think I miss it more than he does, mostly cause it made me feel sure he was being protected by the antibodies and nutrition my milked provided him and now he is just relaying on food for that, is a scary world out there and my little baby is a big boy now and I want to cry!!!!

He is getting so big in so little time =( is not easy to see it happen before my eyes even tho I'm so happy to see him thrived.

He takes a bit longer to fall sleep at night, we have to turn down all the lights and tv and all and sometimes it can go by a whole hour and he still rolling around in bed, but other than that, thankfully nothing else has happen, he is not eating more and is still picky, but we are working on that too.

So, my advice to any mom out there thinking of weaning your baby, do it at your own time at your own pace and this is a process that only you and your baby can have an opinion on, cause first those are your boobs and second he is your child.

As always, thank you for reading me, would love to read about your own experience on this, so please leave a comment or better yet, make a post in The Motherhood Community.

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