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Home › Articles › Weaning › The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning

The Nursing Mother's Guide to Weaning

Part 2

By Kathleen Huggins, R.N., M.S. and Linda Ziedrich

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Guilt feelings may also arise when a mother has weaned for what she sees as selfish reasons -- to take a vacation without the kids, for instance. If the child adjusts quickly, seems happy, and is making developmental strides, guilt feelings quickly recede. But if a child regresses -- to wearing diapers, for instance -- or expresses unfulfilled needs in ways like thumb-sucking or carrying around a bottle, a mother may know her decision to wean was not in her child's best interests. If you find yourself in this situation, and if you can't or don't wish to start nursing again, it's probably best to allow relatively harmless self-soothing measures like thumbsucking, but to also strive to give your child a lot of love and attention in ways such as cuddling and playing together.

Perhaps most mothers have mixed feelings about weaning when they plan to have no more children. In this case the last nursing marks the end of a woman's reproductive years. The last nursing is, like the first menstruation, a momentous life event for which our culture provides no rite of passage. Other people, even a woman's own family members, may be blind to her feelings, which she may lack words to express anyway. Perhaps this is a time to make "a great feast," as Abraham reputedly did on the day that Isaac was weaned. Both mother and child should be honored, since they have each completed a major passage from one stage of life to another.

And how do children feel after weaning? In one survey of U.S. mothers, most said their children's responses to weaning were "OK" or "happy" regardless of the children's ages (Avery 1977). Mothers elsewhere in the world have similar reports. Malian women told a researcher that their children, when suddenly weaned, weren't upset and did not cry, or cried only during the nights for a few days, and quickly forgot about nursing (Dettwyler 1987). Zulu mothers made similar assertions, although their careful preparations for weaning -- planning the date months ahead, tying charms around the children's necks, spending the day at home, and in some cases even calling in a "weaning specialist," belied their apparent claim (Albino and Thompson 1956).


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