Kinley is 19 months old and we have had a BIG change this past month!! Kinley is no longer nursing to fall asleep during naptime OR bedtime OR during the middle of the night!! I am feeling guilty over how it all went down because she wasn’t quite ready and I pretty much cut her off cold turkey, but she would have been content nursing for forever if I let her and our sleep troubles would have continued to be out of control. I had to take advantage of an opportunity. She came down with a little head cold that resulted in a nasty cough at night. I nursed her to bed like normal (on Wed, October 3rd, to be exact :-)) and woke up Thursday morning, realizing that I didn’t nurse her at all during the night. Her cough woke her up every few minutes during the night and even though we were up all night, she was just so exhausted and able to fall back asleep without some nursing help. I decided that we’d just go for it from that point on. She cried and screamed and clawed at me for at least 30 minutes each time I tried to put her down during the first week of weaning and I almost gave in so many times, but after having a mastitis infection 36 hours into it, being on meds, and pulling out my pumping equipment again, I knew we couldn’t turn back. It has definitely been rough, but we’re getting there. Like I said, the first week was the worst, but I stayed with her, consoling and loving on her and the second week wasn’t quite as difficult. She finally started taking a sippy cup of yogurt/water to bed, which helps to calm her down initially and then she eventually falls asleep after about 30-45 minutes. I have definitely been a little sentimental about weaning, which is crazy because I felt SO done a long time ago! Tyler initiated the weaning process for him and I never felt sad or guilty about it, so I’m not sure if my feelings are just because I forced her into weaning or because I didn’t know the last time I nursed her was actually going to be the last time or because I’m not certain if I’ll ever experience nursing a baby again or what! I think this has my hormones all out of whack. ;-) However, the best part of this is that she’s pretty much sleeping through the night now. Amazing how that happens! I haven’t had a 4+ hour stretch of sleep in forever.
Another big thing... Kinley had an apparently pretty common injury that still sounds pretty major to me just four days after we stopped nursing, which is one of the times that I came seconds away to giving in and shoving a boob in her mouth for comfort since that’s what she wanted. Travis was trying to keep her from going to the road and accidentally dislocated her elbow. Seriously! We had no idea at the time that anything happened, but her left arm became completely non-functioning throughout the evening and she cried anytime I tried to touch it. Travis finally realized it was the same arm that he had pulled on, so I called our pedi that night after she went to bed. Anna knew exactly what it was... it’s called Nurse Maid’s Elbow and she walked me through the steps of trying to pop it back in place. After watching about ten You Tube videos and feeling less than confident, I attempted to fix it with no luck. We went in to see Anna the next morning and she popped it back in place in two seconds and after the initial freak out from Kinley, she was immediately using her arm again! It was definitely an easy injury to fix, but one that we’ll have to be very careful of in the future since she is now more susceptible to having it happen again. She scored a pretty fancy shopping cart out of the deal from her daddy, who was feeling slightly guilty. Hey, you know us girls have to milk it when we can! ;-)
She has added a few new words to her vocab: nink (drink), up, down, out, rock, boot and book. I’m sure there are more, but it all sounds so similar. She loves playing outside and the weather has been great lately, so I’m really looking forward to Fall getting here and being outdoors with my little girl!
Kinley had a photo shoot crasher! :-) I love any opportunity to take pictures of my babies together!
