Weaning is exhausting

This is an excerpt from an email I sent that I thought had a lot of my thoughts on this process as it has been happening, which I would like to save.

Since Saturday we have been working on night weaning Lawton.  It has gone much, much better than I expected.  On previous attempts I lasted all of 15 minutes before I caved in and said “screw this!” and nursed him.  All week we discussed that the nursing was going to go night-night and he would have to wait until the morning to nurse.  On Saturday night he woke up around 1am I held him and sang to him until about 3am until he was out enough where jostling him did not wake him back up again.  Two hours seems long, but he didn’t cry much, just had a hard time falling asleep soundly.  Last night it only took about 45 minutes for him to go back to sleep, but he woke up a second time at almost 4am and I could not get him to go back to sleep until I nursed him around 5:30.  He got very close, just not totally asleep.  I would really love to nurse longer,… but we are talking about baby #2 and my body doesn’t seem to want to make that happen (ie still have not had a period) unless we get Lawton to cut back a little on nursing.  It’s hard because he knows sign language and he makes the sign for nursing (he still does not say many words) but it just melts me when he starts signing.  Funny, in previous attempts I have had Todd go to him and that’s when he started screaming like he was being scalped and I would cave.  This time, I decided to be involved (I previously thought I would be more stressful for Lawton if I was involved, like I was taunting him with a carrot or something) and that did the trick for calming him.  Even if he couldn’t nurse, he was much happier if I was there and singing/holding him.  I hope tonight goes better.  One wake up and even less than 45m would be divine!   We’ll see.  It’s been an experience.