Life After Weaning:
Ending the breastfeeding relationship - Part 2

by Kathleen Huggins and Linda Ziedrich

Advice on weaning is hard to come by, and often contradictory. In part two of this excerpt from "The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning," learn about what to expect of yourself and your child when you wean. (Read part one here.)

Time heals
If you have such feelings, be assured your sadness will diminish in time. Appreciate your own courage and determination in persisting as long as you did with breastfeeding problems. Remember that any amount of breastfeeding benefits a baby, even if it's just one feeding of colostrum. Your baby will love being fed no matter what you feed her. And it is possible to minimize health risks and establish a strong mother-baby relationship when you must bottle-feed.

Even mothers who breastfeed for close to a year or more sometimes feel sad when nursing ends. Many women speak nostalgically of the "warmth," "closeness," and "cuddling" of their nursing years. A woman may miss nursing even if she initiated weaning and has no regrets about having done so. But she is most likely to feel sad about ending nursing if her child initiated weaning. Even if the mother had planned to wean soon, she may feel surprised and a little discouraged when her child rejects her in favor of a cup or bottle.

Feelings of guilt
A mother may feel guilty, too, if a child develops health problems soon after weaning. Whether or not the antibodies in her milk could have prevented the child's illness, she may regret that she can't nurse the child through the sickness. If your child gets sick soon after weaning, you might offer your breast whether or not you have any milk. Even a few weak sucks on a dry breast will probably give some solace. Your child may take comfort, too, from resting his head or hand on your breast.

Guilt feelings may also arise when a mother has weaned for what she sees as selfish reasons--to take a vacation without the kids, for instance. If the child adjusts quickly, seems happy, and is making developmental strides, guilt feelings quickly recede. But if a child regresses -- to wearing diapers, for instance -- or expresses unfulfilled needs in ways like thumb-sucking or carrying around a bottle, a mother may know her decision to wean was not in her child's best interests. If you find yourself in this situation, and if you can't or don't wish to start nursing again, it's probably best to allow relatively harmless self-soothing measures like thumbsucking, but to also strive to give your child a lot of love and attention in ways such as cuddling and playing together.

Perhaps most mothers have mixed feelings about weaning when they plan to have no more children. In this case the last nursing marks the end of a woman's reproductive years. The last nursing is, like the first menstruation, a momentous life event for which our culture provides no rite of passage. Other people, even a woman's own family members, may be blind to her feelings, which she may lack words to express anyway. Perhaps this is a time to make "a great feast," as Abraham reputedly did on the day that Isaac was weaned. Both mother and child should be honored, since they have each completed a major passage from one stage of life to another.

Weaning around the world
And how do children feel after weaning? In one survey of U.S. mothers, most said their children's responses to weaning were "OK" or "happy" regardless of the children's ages (Avery 1977). Mothers elsewhere in the world have similar reports. Malian women told a researcher that their children, when suddenly weaned, weren't upset and did not cry, or cried only during the nights for a few days, and quickly forgot about nursing (Dettwyler 1987). Zulu mothers made similar assertions, although their careful preparations for weaning--planning the date months ahead, tying charms around the children's necks, spending the day at home, and in some cases even calling in a "weaning specialist," belied their apparent claim (Albino and Thompson 1956).

The Zulu women had good reason to fear, researchers found: All their children showed disturbed social behavior after weaning (as described in Chapter 4). As far as we can determine, no similar studies have been made of weanlings in the United States or elsewhere. Western children might not react to weaning as strongly as Zulu children, who one day have free access to the breast and the next day have none. Still, most children may have stronger reactions to weaning than their parents care to talk about.

In all but a few of the Zulu children, however, the disturbed behavior ended within a few weeks. In describing their children after weaning, Zulu, American, and other mothers may tend to put out of their minds the stressful period immediately after nursing ends, and focus on their children's later behavior. It is not until a child has resigned herself to the loss of the breast, after all, that she can be considered fully weaned.

Ambivalence
Some psychologists believe that no child ever resigns himself entirely to the loss of the breast. This may perhaps be true, since even children who voluntarily wean may be reacting, for instance, to a low milk supply or a sore in the mouth, and they may miss the breast even if they don't show it. In children weaned beyond about the age of three, nursing never leaves even the conscious memory, and as the older child voluntarily gives up nursing he may express ambivalence about doing so.

But as parents we must judge our children's well-being by their immediate behavior. If a child is happy and healthy now, it makes no sense to worry about what she may say on a psychoanalyst's couch thirty years from now.

Our society's lack of shared standards about weaning is both a blessing and a curse. It is a curse in that it forces every mother to make the difficult decision of when and how to wean each child, and the resulting uncertainty she may feel can make weaning more of a struggle than it should be. But this lack of rules is also a blessing, in that it permits a mother to consider her child's needs over society's will. If a child is anxious, clingy, and sad during gradual weaning or soon after the last nursing, the mother can always start nursing again, at least as often as is necessary for her child's comfort.

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Extra attention
Whether or not they are willing to postpone complete weaning, most mothers go out of their way to make up for the end of breastfeeding. They may be tempted to use the time no longer spent nursing in activities that exclude the child, but just-weaned children usually demand a lot of attention. After weaning, a mother usually finds herself in a transformed but still demanding relationship with her child.

Feeding a baby with bottle, cup, or spoon is hard work, as are the talking, playing, reading, and comforting that a toddler or older child demands. The effort pays off, mothers find, as their weaned children venture into the world, making developmental strides in such areas as walking and talking, and perhaps becoming more independent, outgoing, and responsible. When these things happen, a mother knows her child has put any anger or sadness about weaning behind her; she is truly well weaned.

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About the authors: Kathleen Huggins, RN, MS is the author of The Nursing Mother's Companion and The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning, from which this is excerpted. Linda Ziedrich is an editor and frequent contributor to books about pregnancy and parenting.