How to Wean Your Baby

Giving up the breast part of motherhood

Over the last few months, I’ve encouraged my son’s weaning by offering him cow milk in lieu of nursing. Despite his affection for the breast, he was quick to embrace “Moo” (his word for cow milk) and willingly accepted a cup of it as a substitute for “mama milk” at bedtime. Yet, there are few good resources on the web about weaning a toddler, and, try as I might, I struggled to set a firm timeline for when he would be fully weaned.

Breastfeeding has gained a kind of sacred significance, particularly in white motherhood culture. Even as I was aware of the data that show breastfeeding isn’t essential for infant nutrition, I was convinced of its importance for my child. My mother had breastfed me well into my third year, and so I had held the intention to breastfeed my son until it was clear he no longer needed it. Despite logistical constraints, I had proudly intended to raise an “exclusively breastfed baby.” At six weeks old, I had tried to introduce him to a bottle, but he refused, uninterested in any nipple that wasn’t mine, even a pacifier. I hadn’t anticipated “breastfed” would describe both the milk and its source. Seduced by the idealized culture of “breast is best,” I had unwittingly made a milk jail for myself, unable to spend more than 12 hours away from my son. 

At the same time, nursing had been a ritual of motherhood and infancy we had both avidly embraced. Breastfeeding was an effortless mutual endeavor, which over time, we both took for granted as a natural part of our daily lives. I found breastmilk magical: how my body learned to produce the right amount at the right time of day, how his saliva could modify the contents of my milk to meet his needs. But the few times I pumped, I found the process of a machine sucking liquid (converted blood) from my body painful and grueling, and the liquid that resulted off-putting. Thankfully, the unplanned constellation of unemployment I had found myself in since his birth had made exclusively nursing feasible.

By his second birthday, we were down to one feed a day — usually just before bedtime. Nearing two and half, he was getting close to asking: cow milk was “moo,” and breastmilk was “Dis” — with an index finger pointed at my chest. He was ready.

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In anticipation of weaning him fully, I’d carefully decreased his opportunities to nurse from every other day, to every two days, to every three. Finally, in October, I went on vacation to Nashville for four nights without him, and while he missed me at bedtime, he barely seemed to notice the absence of “mama milk.”

Now, we had devolved into some kind of strange situationship, where, from time to time, at a whim, he’d point to “Dis” (my chest) and demand a feed. Usually it was when he was just waking up in the morning, or waking up from a nap, a moment of sleepy reminiscence of infancy. He reached for breast milk as a creature comfort, even as I knew that he didn’t need it anymore. And I knew I would continue to nurse him on request, unless I could draw a line of finality around weaning. 

Part of me felt silly forcing us into One Last Feed, but without it, we probably could have gone on in this haphazard whenever-somebody-feels-like-it pattern forever. For my own sanity, I needed to draw a line between the before and after that I knew I could hold. For a time, I wasn’t sure I would have the courage to Do It. How could I deny my “exclusively breastfed baby” the breast when I knew he still wanted it? 

During our two-year-and-five-month nursing relationship, my breasts had acquired a kind of talismanic quality. Whenever I picked my son up in an unknown place, he would plunge his fist into my shirt — sometimes gently, other times more forcefully — reaching for the reassurance of flesh. Laying next to him as he fell asleep, he would rest his hand over the curve of my breasts. I’d given myself over to his needs, allowing my body to become a wellspring to feed and nourish him. But it was no longer his needs but his fleeting desire that were at play, and I was ready to fully reclaim my body as my own.

I decided that my son’s 888th day of life would be the day, after failing to wean him on day 700 and then day 800 without a plan to make it stick. It felt like three eternities (8-8-8) since he had been conceived, and it happened to coincide with All Saints Day, a strange kind of confluence with the quiet mourning of “Hallow-wean.” Both a date I could remember and a day of significance in his life, it seemed as good a moment as any to draw a line between the before and after. 

At 7pm, I lifted my son into my lap to nurse him one last time, only to find him with a diaper full of poop. 

“Big poop?” he asked, as I wiped the shit off his ass. 

“Yes!” I said, brightly. 

Now clean, I watched him wander back toward the couch, feeling a wave of sadness that only one of us would remember the moment we were both about to share.

I sat him on my lap, and started crying. He looked at me, confused. 

“Mama otay?” he asked, his brow furrowed as he searched my face for the cause of the tears streaming down my cheeks 

I giggled, imagining the strangeness for him, of my upset doing something that was so routine, and hugged him tight. How wonderful that my baby, at not even two and a half years old, could show empathetic concern for another person. As ready as I was for him to relinquish his demands on my body, I was sad that this tender phase of early motherhood had finally reached its end.

“Yes, baby,” I said in the most reassuring voice I could muster. 

“Mama’s okay. She’s just sad, and feeling a lot of things.” 

He looked at me, blankly. I explained the situation. 

“This is going to be the last time we have mama milk,” I said, trying to make eye contact. 

“Do you understand?”

Almost immediately, he confirmed with an emphatic, “Yes,” though I was pretty sure he couldn’t yet fully grasp the notion of “last” or forever.

I unclasped my bra and drew out my left breast as he swooped in to latch. He assumed his position of habit, nuzzling his forehead against my bicep while clutching the curving flesh of my breast with his left hand. 

Over the three eternities during which I have nursed my son, I’ve allowed breastfeeding to become a pacifier substitute. My husband and I – who just this week passed 365 days of daily meditation – have only managed to achieve this milestone because I so often nursed my son while we meditated in the mornings. In the evenings, I often nursed him while watching 40 minutes of grown-up TV, assuming the content was suitably adult to be over his head. Aside from the nutritional value of breastmilk that had helped him grow into a tall and sturdy 30-pound toddler, I wondered how so many hours in this nested position had shaped his emotional growth. Would he be more confident and self-assured after so much time so close to his mama?

After about five minutes, my son unlatched from the left breast, sat back, burped, and pointed to the right. “Two,” he said, holding up two fingers to indicate he was ready for the second side. 

I whirled him around so he was sitting facing the opposite direction, returned my left breast to my bra, and withdrew the right. Again, he latched almost immediately, but this time, he let his right hand find my left, clutching my left index finger in his hand as he had done since he was only a few days old. Without warning, he flexed his fingers and stabbed his index finger into the center of my palm in a repeated, impatient, poking action. Another five minutes passed. I closed my eyes and tried to encode the somatic memory of what it feels like to love another being so much you will convert your blood into milk to nourish it and give it the strength to live. I thought of all the calories I had consumed for his benefit, all the moments of upset in which I had nursed away his tears.

Over the last two months, I had intentionally allowed our breastfeeding relationship to grow distant and casual. Like a woman preparing for a break up, I’d made myself intentionally unavailable. And he had seemed perfectly content without breast milk — until he wasn’t. The day before I intended to wean him, he woke up adamantly demanding “dis.” I managed to wave him off one last time, but he objected more forcefully than usual, perhaps from some deeper understanding that the end was near. 

He sucked for a few more minutes on the right before he pulled back, looked up at me, and said, “All done,” with a gentle smile of satisfaction.

He paused for a moment. “Two broom?” he said — his word for Cars, his favorite Disney franchise. He was asking for our regular pre-bed ritual of cow milk and TV.