Dads on the Night Weaning Process

Clay: Today in The Lounge we are with Owen. Hello! Owen: Hi! Clay: Today we are talking about weaning, which really if you think about it, its an interesting word. Owen: Yeah, you are right. Clay: Weaning. Owen: Weaning, as in the moon is weaning away. Clay: To me it sounds dirty. Owen: Yeah, in Greek it originally is dirty. Clay: Shouldn't it be breasting? Owen: No, breasting would be the beginning, because you are breasting. This should be unbreasting. Clay: Debreasting. Owen: Debreasting. Clay: So we will start the debreasting. Owen: Right. Clay: So you started in your house. You guys are in the debreasting process. Owen: We are specially in the night debreasting, because we were doing the breasting a lot during the night and it was not much sleep for Jodie, my wife. So we said, yeah, let's go ahead and night debreast. Clay: Well, that's good. Does your daughter sleep in the bed, does she sleep in -- Owen: Yeah, we do co-sleeping, and she has her own bed as well, which is actually nicer than ours, apparently, but she still, sort of, ends up, usually, most of the night, crawling in with us. Clay: So weaning is helpful to restore some sanity to the nighttime. Owen: Yeah, it's amazing how little sleep you get. But you know. Clay: So describe the process. What's the process you guys are going through here now to try and cut back the breastfeeding? How old is your daughter? Owen: She is 17, and that's been an issue too, because teenagers are so independent and stubborn. Clay: Well, they answer the cellphone right in the middle. Owen: Oh my gosh, and that's just embarrassing for the person on the other phone, because they can't understand a thing she is saying, because her mouth is full of her mother's nipple. Clay: Okay. That's not true. Owen: She is 20 months old, and so what we did is we had the conversation with her like, alright, no more yum-yum, we are going to chew to this thing now, we are going to have -- Clay: So you guys are using the technical language? Owen: Yes. We figured get her started, ready for Harvard. Yum-yum from the Latin nyam. So we had that discussion with her, and we chose the seven hours. Someone has written a really good process of folks who are doing co-sleeping and about night weaning. I can't remember his name right now. Clay: Ferber? Owen: Yeah. Is it Ferber? Clay: Ferber is like, kick that kid's ass and stick him in the bed. Owen: Not Ferber, not Ferber. Not that, let him cry, it's good for them. Clay: There are a number of books about sleeping through the night and we don't have a position on which of those are great. Owen: Right. But we don't align ourselves from Ferber, me and Jodie. Anyway, we had this discussion with her, and this guy was saying, choose seven hours that would be a good seven hours. So we chose the midnight till 7. So basically we realized that this was going to be hard. Our house is really tiny. So Jodie was just going to have to get out of there. She called some friends. Jodie is not real popular with people. So she ended up sleeping in our VW bus which we have; we have a 75 VW bus, Camper bus, so its actually good live in. So we set her up out there, so she couldn't hear Arden; that's our baby, being really upset when she woke up and I told her, no yum-yum till morning. So the first night was -- Clay: Your wife slept in the car. Owen: It's a VW Camper, it's not just a car. Clay: 75? Owen: Yeah, 1975. She had a quilt in there. Clay: So she is sleeping in the 75 bug. Owen: It wasn't a bug, it was a camper. These things are designed to have people sleep in them. Clay: Whatever, as long as you feel comfortable with that, who am I to judge? Owen: Right. I don't even think technically that's even homeless sleeping, you are in a residency of a bus. Clay: Is there a bridge nearby she could sleep under? Owen: Like down by the river or something? Clay: Yes. Owen: Yeah, I suppose she could have done that. It's nice in the morning. She got this free cup of soup from this nice church, really good people. Alright. So maybe that wasn't the best choice. Clay: So she moved into the bus. Did that help? Owen: It helped our marriage and the weaning. I think both benefited. We were so glad to see each other, but that's a separate issue. But yeah, it did help. Arden woke up. She was awake for quite a while, like I guess an hour, two hours in the middle of the night, kind of morning I think it what it is, morning, what was going on, and gave her some milk. I didn't try and feed her myself that yum-yum. Who knows? Clay: Breast pump would help you at that. Owen: Yeah, I have seen that. Then we just walked around our small little house, and then she went back to sleep. Clay: So you stuck it through. You didn't breakdown, you weren't knocking on the window of the bus and holding the child up. Owen: Or just like putting the baby in the bus and then closing the door. Clay: How is it going? So the first night, you are through the first night, how far into the process right now? Owen: Three nights. Clay: And pretty good? Owen: Pretty good. Jodie is loving the bus. The curtains are nicer than they have ever been. She actually cleans it up. Lady's touch which is what it needed. Yeah, Arden's -- like last night she woke up for just 15 minutes, that was great. She would wake up every so often like every hour or so, but I would say, hey, no. Clay: So when are going to finish the job? So she is 19 months now, are you going to allow her to breastfeed during the day for a while longer? Owen: Yeah, I think. What are your thoughts on that? Like how far do you think breastfeeding should go? Clay: Well, for us, with the first child my wife, Wynn, did a year. The middle child 14 months, and with the baby, six years. Owen: Six years? Clay: Well, no, that's not true. A little bit longer. The AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics says, six months breastfeeding exclusively, but there is no upper end. There is no medical evidence that harm is done if you breastfeed the baby for three years or beyond. I think some people feel uncomfortable with that. Clay: I think we are going probably just go for a while. A lot of our friends recently have had just sort of a natural weaning, sort of like the kid and the mother, both simultaneously sort of feel, this is about time when it sort of fades off, and that's been really nice. So I think we will probably stick to that, we would just sort of feel it out as we go. Owen: It's the way it worked for us. Just eventually as the child is introduced to the soft food, became less and less interested, and the last little bit and the last breastfeeding to be taken away was a little bit hard, because that sort of soothing one at the end of the day, but that happened fairly naturally. It wasn't too terribly traumatic. So it's possible. Stick with it guys. Good luck and definitely send us your own weaning stories and your thoughts about the word weaning. Just drop us a comment. Owen, thanks a lot for stepping in. Owen: No problem. Clay: So how are you going to get her back in the house? Maybe you could put like a car stereo in the kitchen and sort of lure her back. Owen: That's not a bad idea. Get that diesel smell go.