Setting Limits

Grace was 9 days shy of 2 years old when Brendan was born. She was still nursing multiple times a day (and night!) and I thought that tandem nursing was going to be a wonderful experience. I looked forward to providing comfort and nutrition to both of my babies and thought the transition would be relatively smooth.

We brought Brendan home from the hospital on a Wednesday afternoon. I hadn’t seen Grace in two and a half days. She crawled up onto the couch and immediately requested milk (actually, she requested boob monsters, which is what she affectionately referred to nursing as). As planned, I allowed her to nurse while I tried clumsily to nurse her newborn brother.

For the first 24 hours, this worked out fine. I was able to meet the needs of both of my children and things seemed to be going very smoothly. Brendan had started life in the NICU on a feeding tube so we had some challenges with latching, but the comfort of our home seemed to be relaxing and things seemed to be working.

By Friday morning it was clear that something had to change, and quick. Grace was requesting to nurse every hour. I think she was seeking comfort to deal with the new shift in her little world, but I was feeling exhausted and touched out. There was constantly a child nursing which left me little time to sleep, eat, or even use the bathroom. By Friday evening I was crying and desperate to stop. I needed a break. I had never set limits for Grace while breastfeeding and my solution was to abruptly wean her. I saw no other solution and posted on our local breastfeeding support group looking for ways to cut her off immediately.

After reading many posts from women who had been in my shoes, I decided that I didn’t really want to wean her that quickly, but I did need something to change. I decided to begin setting limits. I struggled with a lot of guilt. Not only did I bring a new baby into Grace’s life, I was changing the one source of comfort that she had had throughout her life, drastically.

On Saturday I woke up with new resolve. Grace was going to be allowed to nurse for the time it took me to sing the ABC song 3 times. She was not allowed to nurse while Brendan was nursing. And she was not allowed to nurse in the middle of the night anymore. I needed to sleep. I couldn’t stand the out of sync sensation of them both nursing at the same time. And I needed to have some hours of the day where there wasn’t a child nursing. ABC was something she understood, and I made it very clear that this was what we were going to do.

She woke up that morning and asked for boob monsters, I told her we were going to wait until later and enthusiastically got out a new toy and began to play with her. This is how our shift in routine began. She had her first nursing session before nap. 3 ABC as we had talked about. She did cry a little to nurse longer but settled pretty quickly. Rather than a marathon nursing session, we had a cuddle session. We continued this before naps for several weeks.

Night time was the hardest. I stuck to my guns: no nursing after bedtime. We did 3 ABC, and she wasn’t able to nurse again until morning nap the next day. She woke up many times at night for the first few weeks. Each time I would go back into her room and snuggle her until she fell back asleep. This was very difficult for me to stick to, but I knew it would pay off. Sometimes she cried which broke my heart. Sometimes I thought it would be so much easier to just nurse her back to sleep at 2 am. But by the end of 3-4 weeks, she was sleeping consistently through the night. When she did wake, she asked for hugs, not milk. We were making progress.

I decided when Brendan was around a month old that we were going to cut out the daytime nap nursing sessions. As he was becoming more awake and alert, nursing her before naps was becoming more difficult. We started doing 2 ABC for nap and 3 for bedtime. Over the course of a month we dropped to 1 ABC, then just spelling names, and finally, only spelling Grace’s name. By the time Brendan was 2 months old, she was no longer nursing before a nap and down to 2 ABC before bedtime. She was nursing for only 2-3 minutes a day. 2 months prior, she was nursing 8-10 times per day. My mental health improved, my physical health improved, and, most importantly, she was totally fine. We found other ways to meet her needs (snuggling), and weaned her down in a concrete way that she understood and was able to participate in.

Brendan turns a year old tomorrow and Grace turns 3 next week. She is still nursing for 2 ABC at night before bed. I am not bothered by this so we are going to allow her to stop on her own terms. This part of our journey has not been easy, but it has been worth it. My only wish is that I had worked on setting limits before Brendan was born. I believe this would have been easier for her, but you live and learn. She no longer asks to nurse when she is hurt or scared. She asks to snuggle. After her 2 ABC are done at night (and sometimes these 2 ABC go very fast, sometimes very slow, it all depends on my mood), she asks to hold my milk (the top of my breast) or hold my “special spot” (my shoulder), and she falls asleep. I imagine this will be our routine for a long time to come.

I struggled with a lot of guilt during this journey. I wish I had been more gentle with myself. We as mothers constantly put our children’s needs ahead of our own. I realized very quickly that doing this was going to go no where good, very fast. It is ok to set limits. It is ok to take care of ourselves. It is ok to make sure our basic needs are met. And it is ok to make our mental and physical health a priority. I believe that setting these limits for Grace, as difficult as it was for both of us, made me a better mom during those early days of having a newborn and a very young toddler.

Tandem nursing is beautiful, but it isn’t for everyone. It is ok to alter your plans at anytime. If its working for you, great! If it isn’t, try something else! Setting limits allows everyone’s needs to be met, which is really in everyone’s best interest.