So...how often does your toddler nurse?

[@llli*gmineheart]

DS is 21 months and easily nurses 8-12 times/day (including at least 2x in the night, usually more). I always expected to be "still" nursing at this age...but not THIS MUCH. I hear people with 6m/o say their baby nurses 5-6x a day!

I very rarely admit to family and friends how much DS is still nursing.

Any other very frequently-nursing almost 2y/o's out there? (Though I don't think 21 months is exactly almost 2...I guess I'm still in denial! )

[@llli*sixyearplan]

Well my DD isn't almost two, she is 14 months, but she nurses nonstop I tell you. At least every hour we are home and permalatch at night. So I'm guessing she will still be nursing a lot six months down the line. Who knows. I am happy to nurse often most of the time.

[@llli*gmineheart]

Well my DD isn't almost two, she is 14 months, but she nurses nonstop I tell you. At least every hour we are home and permalatch at night. So I'm guessing she will still be nursing a lot six months down the line. Who knows. I am happy to nurse often most of the time.

Yeah, he was doing an all-the-time kind of nursing around that age, too. I laughed at the pediatrician's nurse asking me how often he was nursing because it wasn't even possible to distinguish one session from another...

He still seemed no different from an under-1y/o at that point, though -- and he was very slow to start on solids, so I figured it was still very much nutritionally necessary. I just went with it. Now I sometimes feel like I've failed to give him other ways of coping with stress :-(

[@llli*sixyearplan]

Sounds like us now. But I worked too hard with this girl in the early months to encourage her to nurse to try and limit her. I am mostly proud of where we are. However, she is cutting canines and molars right now and is whiny and not giving me any break when she goes to sleep - nursing nonstop before I'm ready for bed and switching sides every 10 minutes. So I'm a little less enthused this week.

I guess I am always proud of mamas who have strong nursing relationships.

[@llli*sixyearplan]

Now I sometimes feel like I've failed to give him other ways of coping with stress :-(

I just reread this and I wanted to offer a different perspective. I think they way you are giving him to cope with stress is perfect. You are his home base. By nursing through toddlerhood you have an instant soother for all those emotions and scrapes, whether big or small.

And this is what nature intended. The more I read, the more convinced I am
of this. And I didn't nurse my first two much beyond a year. The second I wanted to but she self weaned because she never comfort nursed. And I blinked and these crazy girls grew up too fast and I know that this is just a tiny bit of time in our lives.

This is a good article on weaning.

http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html

[@llli*rochel]

My DD2 is almost 21 months and up until about 4-6 weeks ago I felt like she was also nursing at about the same rate as your LO -

The all of a sudden she really cut down during the day. (still a lot at night) I think she is just too busy playing and doing other things. And we fell into much more of a routine of her eating meals. But she is definitely a big comfort nurser. So some days there is a lot more nursing then others.

You are not alone!

[@llli*marinaew]

Well my DD isn't almost two, she is 14 months, but she nurses nonstop

same age/deal here. every 2 hrs.

[@llli*jessruff]

My DD nurses a lot. But she doesn't eat a ton of solid food on a regular basis and she is pushing molars at the moment. 8-12x a day sounds right. Sometimes more, never less.

[@llli*proudmamaof3]

25 month old DS2 here and still LOTS of nursing. I'd say 5 times or more in the day depending upon his mood and what is going on and at least 4 times at night, usually 6.

I too worry about not giving him other coping mechanisims besides nursing. I have an ODD DS1 who was nursed and CLW till 3 years and 7 months and I sometimes think his behavior would be worse if I hadn't nursed him/comforted him with nursing. But sometimes I wonder if I relied on nursing too much and didn't teach him other ways to cope with stress.

I wonder how other mommas teach nursing toddlers to cope with transitions and other stressful situations? What other techniques do you use besides nursing?

[@llli*gmineheart]

We do a lot of talking about emotions - we even have a book that I like that shows different facial expressions on animal characters, and he likes to turn the wheel in the book and name the different expressions.

We tell him how we feel about different things and, for instance, if we tell him something made mom sad, he'll frown and make a crying sound and say "sad." And he'll ask if we have an ouchie and say "kiss it?" And he'll kiss our ouchies if we have them (sometimes we tell him we have an ouchie in our soul and need a kiss on the lips and a big hug. lol)

He doesn't get coddled and nursed for every ouchie. He actually usually yells "TACKLE!" or "BIG TACKLE!" when he falls. DH and I talked about it last night, and realized he really only nurses after falls/injuries that leave a mark!

He's such a sweet little boy. And I know that part of (or most of?) the frequent nursing is needing to be near me because it is safe. And I am glad that he feels so safe.

I'm just beat, I guess. It's been a really rough couple of months and he's waking up every 2 hours to nurse, and I guess I never expected to be nursing a 2y/o almost as many times a day as I nursed a newborn?

When DH and I talked about it from the perspective of "what didn't we do?" all I could come up with was...um...force him not to nurse? Let him cry? Have me leave him for extended periods of time so he *couldn't* nurse? None of those sound like good options...