Tandem Nursing or Quit Cold Turkey?

[sroz]

Hi Everyone,

My DD is 18 months old and will be 21 months when the new baby arrives just three months from now.  I have her weaned from night nursing now.  She has no interest in weaning during the day.  She'll even ask for the breast if she is bored, anxious, or wants to have special mommy time.  Should I wean her before the new baby arrives?  I am worried that she''ll see me feeding the lo and want to nurse as well, whether or not I wean her. 

Any advice?

[*Ali*]

What do you want to do?

I tandem fed my two who were 20 months apart for 6 months and it was fine. What I am happy I did was to set times for nursing ds1 well before ds2 arrived. So he was just on morning wake up and BT feeds. If he asked outside of these times I told him yes he could have a feed at BT and distracted him worth a snack or book etc.

I just told him that DS2 was too small for food and that is why he had extra feeds during the day. After 4 months (at 24mo) we weaned the morning feed via DH getting DS1 up and taking him downstairs for breakfast thereby distracting him. We then weaned DS1's BT feed at 26mo (when DS2 was 6mo)  by first moving it to downstairs in the living room before the bath and then asking if he wanted to go up and have extra stories with a sippy of cows milk with DH instead. It worked great and he didn't get upset except for I think once after about a week after he last fed when he asked for a BF and I just told him he was a big boy now and didn't have boobies anymore. He was easily distracted though.

I also limited DS1 to one breast and said we had to save the other side for DS2. In the early days I often fed them together but then they got out of sync and I fed them at different times.