The Dreaded W Word

In 3 more weeks I join the ranks of millions of other mommies and daddies – I will be a working parent.  No longer able to lounge around the house in my pj’s all day (hah hah – as if Stay-At-Home-Mommies get to loung around….).  Instead I will have to spend each morning hurriedly waking up kids, getting them dressed and off to daycare every morning.  Thankfully our new daycare will feed them breakfast.  Part of me is excited to be back with my co-workers and friends, and the other part of me is sad.  This very well could be my last Maternity Leave, my last opportunity to spend a year at home with my children.  We had good times going to the park, library, indoor playgrounds etc.. And we had some dark times, coping through the snowiest winter in at least a decade while Daddy Rob was in Ireland almost 50% of the time. 

All that aside I now face a big dilemma.  Weaning…  The dreaded W word.  "Baby" Brooke will turn 1 yr on the day I return to work.  We’ve enjoyed a very smooth nursing relationship over the past 11 months.  So smooth that I haven’t seen the need to force the bottle or sippy issue.  She copes quite well with daddy or Oma whenever I’ve left her for a few hours.  She’ll even allow them to rock her to sleep with minimal fuss without a drink, allowing me to play softball once a week guilt free.  At this point I basically have a few options:

1) Wean daytime feedings over the next 3 weeks to a sippy cup or bottle by simply refusing to nurse, using distraction and food to get through the day

2) Wean both daytime and night nursing cold turkey to a bottle or sippy cup using the dreaded cry-it-out (CIO) method

3) Do nothing – send her to daycare with a cup and hope that over the first few weeks she’ll adapt, continuing to nurse her whenever she and I are together, allowing Brooke to lead the weaning when the time comes.

Emotionally I’m so torn.  I enjoy nursing and feel guilty enough for having to return to work and leaving her with virtual strangers.  With Sierra, I nursed for 10 weeks after I went back to work – after that she stopped wanting to nurse as she’d gotten attached to her bottles of expressed milk that I sent to daycare for her.  I know I can do that again – only Brooke is much older than Sierra was when I returned.  A few friends and family are putting the pressure on me to wean.  Hubby wants us to head to Ireland in September sans kiddos, and that means leaving them with my MIL.  No matter what I do, by that time Brooke will have been in daycare for 10 weeks or so and should be quite accustomed to her bottle or sippy I would think (no matter which method I use to wean her daytime). One of the biggest issues is that Brooke still wakes up 2-3 times a night.  I co-sleep with her and nurse her every time she wakes up.  Generally she falls right back to sleep, and so do I.  She’s on the small side – only 17 lbs and I feel the added night time nutrition she’s been getting for the past year has helped her to get to even that size.  Her daytime eating is great – she quite often will out eat her sister, as I’ve learned to hold off nursing and offer food first. When I returned to work when Sierra was a baby, she was still waking up to nurse too.  I weaned her night time nursing to a bottle 6 weeks in, which caused a huge fight to get her back to sleep – with nursing she fell quickly back to sleep, but with the bottle I had to rock her and fight with her for over an hour to get her back to sleep – this went on every night for 3 months at which point hubby led the CIO method when I was too sick to cope (I had a kidney infection). I’m afraid my 5 min wake ups will turn to hour long fights if I try to wean. 

This is where you come in, dear internet.  What would you do if you were in my shoes?  

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