Crime And Punishment

Well, some progress has been made. I finally got her to stop groping/rubbing/pinching/twisting my other nipple while nursing. It felt like that Honda commercial, with the pinchy crab. "No pinch." "No pinch!" "Cause it HURTS!" "No, not a little pinch." "No peench, no peench!"

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I can also now usually get her to pop off and roll over fairly soon after falling asleep, rather than being trapped in her mouth for hours. And that means I can make my escape! Wahoo! More internet quality parenting book reading time!
We also have another huge development. Sometimes, after nursing for a bit, she can roll over while awake and fall asleep on her own! So far it's mostly in the middle of the night, when I am just done, and tell her to shove off and go to sleep. It's not very often. Once a week maybe. But it's a huge improvement, especially as we aren't using any kind of regular plan to wean her or get her to sleep without the booby.
It's funny. When she first started caressing my breast while nursing, I loved it. I thought it was darling. So special. I don't even remember how it turned into Chinese Nipple Torture. I don't even remember when she started touching the other nipple. I only remember her caressing my great white expanses of breast flesh, peeking out of my criss-cross nursing top neckline (I wear only the pull down necklines. I hated freezing my tummy off pulling my shirt up, or having the cloth all up in her grill for the shirts where you just pull up the breast area cloth. And the clasps and whatnot were such a pain in the heinie to unclasp and re-clasp every time we switched sides. And you had to be Houdini to do them one-handed!)
It's taken months (6 or 7) to help her not need my nipple as a lovey, and my other arm got cold and sore, vigilantly safeguarding my breast from amazingly diligent and creative little hands. But I kept my hand cupped firmly over my breast every time we nursed. About a month ago, I was able to keep my hand down, and just pop it up when her hand started creeping under my shirt, and now I just have to quietly say "no" to get her to move her hand away.

Next steps:
Getting her to fall asleep on her own after a little nursing.
Getting her to fall asleep with no nursing.
Getting her to fall asleep without me laying next to her.
Getting her to fall asleep in her own bed.

We may try and move her to her own bed as part of an earlier step, like nurse her in her room and then do the other steps in there, or something, but maybe not. Depends if we need to make room in our bed sooner for a new addition or not. So far, there's no hurry. But each of these steps needs to be done before we can move on to the next step. If I had just taken her from nursing to sleep while squeezing my boob, snuggling with me in our bed, and suddenly dumped her alone in her room, we'd just traumatize everyone. Yes, she'd eventually cry herself to sleep. After we broke her. Now, I'm not saying that by letting your kid cry-it-out that you're breaking them. Some kids can handle it. Others can't.

Mine can't. She can't even handle a time-out by herself. Like, she can't even function. But if I remove her from the situation and hold her, she listens, but still doesn't want to be there, so it is still a  'punishment.' But at this age, time-outs are more about separating them from the problem, rather than discipline and punishment, in my book. My husband puts her in her room alone for a time-out, and his are way longer than I recommend (1 minute per year of age is best.) She spends the whole time bawling and begging, and has no idea why she's being punished. I take her and hold her, and tell her I'll wait until she's ready to listen. Then we discuss why she's being punished. Sometimes it's just that she was starting to get cranky and needs some alone time to recharge, and then I try to do a quiet activity with her.
Sometimes she's being grabby or pushy and needs to be away from the situation. And because she was away from the situation, we can come up with a solution. If they were fighting over a toy, say, we think up something fun she can play with instead when she gets back. If she was being violent, we come up with other solutions, and future consequences if the behavior continues. ("Instead of pushing when Pilu gets too close, you need to use your words to tell her to stop. Because she's younger than you, if she doesn't listen YOU need to move away, instead of pushing her. Next time you push, I'm going to give her whatever toy you're playing with. If you push her again, then you need to play in the other room.")

Anyhoo, for her, crying-it-out, even with us in the room with her, doesn't work. Hours later... still crying. Heart-wrenching sobs of pain too. Not the little "Waaah. Prove you love me" cries. And begging. Pleading. It's the only time I've ever hated her ability to speak so many words so early. "Mommy! Please! Up! Love you!" at 12 months. "Mommy! Count to ten! Count to ten, then I can have booby! I think I feel a little better now! We can try again!" at 18 months. I stopped trying after that. As much as I hate being tethered to this kid every night (can't stay out with my Mommies after bedtime. Can't have a Girls' Weekend with my sisters. Etc.) Trying to teach her to sleep without nursing, without first doing each step listed above to make it an easier transition for her, makes me want to kill myself.
I have The Baby Whisperer to thank, for at least teaching me that we had to break it down into steps, and handle each one at a time first. So I know it can be done. Our problem was trying to wean her off everything at once. Boob, Teddy Boob, snuggle-to-sleep, and sleeping in our bed.