Level Up!

Today we gained Baby +1! She not only outgrew the preemie-sized diapers (finally! She was never technically within their 'up to 5 lbs' weight, but has still been wearing them for 3 weeks!) but she also now needs more formula after nursing. [Or more frequent feedings... F*ck that!]

So here were her stats previously:
STR: 1
STA: 1
DEX: 1
INT: 1
WIS: 1
CHA: 15
Skills: Eating: 5, Pooping: 20, Sleeping: 20, Burping: 5, Peeing on Mommy: 5

Baby

Now that she's leveled up:
STR: 1
STA: 2 (This reflects her ability to slam back more food in a sitting)
DEX: 1
INT:1
WIS: 1
CHA: 18 (Either she's cuter now, or my total apathy due to crazy hormones and sleep deprivation has gone away. Or both.)
Skills: Eating: 10, Pooping: 20, Sleeping: 15, Burping: 15, Peeing/Pooping/Projectile Spitting-Up on Mommy: 15

Baby +1

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!"

photo

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.

Booby Trapped

To start, let me tell you that my child is now over 2, and, yes. We're still breastfeeding. It's my fault. I was so thrilled that I could lull her to sleep with my boobies, that it never occurred to me until it was too late (and I had time to read parenting books) that I was conditioning her to need to breastfeed to fall asleep. So now she either falls asleep on the nip, or in the car. And with the price of gas being what it is, the nips are cheaper.
I've read many many books on parenting and how to get kids to sleep. The No-Cry Sleep Solution (and  the one for Toddlers,) The Baby Whisperer (and the one for Toddlers,) Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, and Nighttime Parenting, to name a few.
But it was too little, too late by the time I found these books. The No-Cry books have some great tips, that have helped me to escape once she's asleep (I used to have to lay there with her for 2 hours during each nap. Every day. No lie.) And she's getting better, and can occasionally roll off of me and fall asleep after nursing, rather than during, which is a huge step for us. And this is just from me haphazardly applying some of the tips occasionally, not a regular planned schedule that I stick to.

So if I had to recommend just 1 book, it would be the No-Cry book(s) for your child's age. Next best is the Baby Whisperer books, but she advocates having them sleep alone, and we chose to co-sleep, so a lot of her ideas and tricks are either harder to do or ineffectual. The Healthy Sleep one is only good if you are a fan of Cry-It-Out (CIO.) I'm not. I couldn't even finish the book. It made me miserable to read it. And Nighttime Parenting was useless, as it advocates nursing on demand and co-sleeping, which we were already doing. Thanks for nothin'!
My issue is that as she's gotten older, the boobies aren't as effective at helping her sleep, and she doesn't know how to sleep without them. So I either lay there for hours (literally) until she finally drops from exhaustion, or we get frustrated with each other and then Daddy takes her for a ride in the car.
So, to avoid this problem (caused by "accidental parenting" which is a phrase I like from the Baby Whisperer,) nurse (or bottle feed. I'm not a breast nazi) them to groggy, then lay them down to sleep (in your bed*, their bassinet, crib, whatever.) And let them fall asleep on their own. If baby cries, pick her up until she stops, then set her back down. You may have to do this multiple times. I've heard of having to do it hundreds of times. But trust me - it sure beats having a 2-year-old with her hands down your shirt at the Post Office saying "Nice boobies Mommy! Can I drink them?"

*If you want to co-sleep, there are good resources, such as the Sleeping With Your Baby book that we read, to help you do it safely. Don't rely solely on advice from me, since I may not mention key safety issues and solutions, or all the risk factors. I'm not an expert.

Now, don't get me wrong. If you choose to breastfeed until your child goes off to college, that's your choice, and I fully support your right to make that decision. This advice is just for those who don't want to get suckered into it, like I did.

Another common mistake is to assume every cry means "hungry." I know that at the time, I was surprised at how she always wanted to eat. In hindsight, I was probably one of those poor shlubs who used the breast to soothe, even when baby wasn't hungry. So she never learned to self-soothe. Doh! We're working on it, but there aren't a lot of resources for un-training toddlers. And the advice there is seems either too hard to do logistically (every time she sits up, lay her back down. Seriously? YOU try picking up my squirmy-wormy when she wants nothing to do with lying down.) or ineffectual (describe a beach and the waves and how relaxed she is? After trying that twice, now if I start with "You're on a sandy beach..." she starts screaming "No! NONONO!" Not very relaxing! She's on to me. She knows what I'm trying to do and is not interested!)
So unless you know a feeding is due, try the boobs last. Yes, she might be rooting. Yes, she might be making hungry mouth motions. But she might also have learned that that gets her the comfort of the boob, as well as food. So if baby doesn't have her heart in it, pop her off and give her comfort in some other way. Or some other fun activity. Around here, it has gotten so ridiculous, I call them "comfort boobies" and "Teddy Boob." She started needing to knead and pinch and twiddle my other nip whenever she breastfed. That went on for over a year. Over. A. Year. So start now. Let her find comfort elsewhere.

But if you have a Spirited or Highly Sensitive child [same thing, really. Just different terms by different authors,] like mine, the journey might be a little harder. Armies to the boobyfield! Nipple shields up! Don't fire until you see the whites of their teeth! The battle has just begun.