Possible TMI Alert: This post will discuss weaning, aka, the end of nursing. If that is a topic that freaks you out, either in general, or you don’t want to think about me in that context, come back tomorrow. Or go read my last current events rant.

Ok, so, we’re working on weaning Noah. He’s been down to only nursing at bedtime for a few months now, with occasional exceptions. (Maybe once more every 10 days, post meltdown tantrum.)

My latest step has been to limit the amount of time we nurse at bedtime. I’ve spent a week or so shooting for 10 minutes on each side, usually succeeding on one side and making it to under 20 on the other.

A few days ago, I got more firm about that.

It didn’t go very well. Bedtime suddenly took over an hour. Neither of us really knew how to handle getting Noah to sleep without me nursing him until he was asleep, then putting him in bed.

In the mean time, Noah was on a strike against dinner. He’d eat nothing or a token bite, and then be legitimately hungry at bedtime, which of course, made limiting the nursing even more unpopular.

So we tried letting him have a bedtime snack of string cheese. (Why cheese? Because a long time ago, I read something on BitchPhD, about cheese bacteria not causing cavities (read the comments, they’re very scientific), which is why she lets her son have cheese as a bedtime snack and might be why the cheese course evolved as the final course in fancy dinners. Also, Noah likes it.)

On the third night of that, Tuesday, I reached the end of my rope. Jill and I made a plan: stories, then diminishing amounts of nursing, then into the crib. If he cries, we check after 3, 5, 7, and 10 minutes.

Wednesday, that worked beyond well. In fact, there was no crying, there was just falling asleep.

Yesterday, it worked a little bit differently, but also well.

Noah snuggled in my lap and we read his new favorite book, “That’s Not My Train!” We even read it all the way through in the traditional page order, and then read 2 pages over again.

Then Noah said, “Bed? Bed?”

“You want to go to bed? Do you want to read the airplane book?”

“No.”

No sooner had Noah’s feet landed in the crib than he began asking, “Cheese? Cheese?”

Feeling both a little guilty and a little disoriented over the fact that we’d just skipped the nursing part of our bedtime ritual for the first time ever, I said I would go downstairs and get Noah a piece of cheese.

When I left the room, he was playing quietly in his crib, in the dark.

I should so not have returned with the cheese. I think. Except then I would have lied to him which I don’t want to do.

Anyway, there was some fussing when I left the room after providing the cheese. It escalated to full blown crying about 5 minutes later.

When I got upstairs, it turned out that the choo-choo had fallen (or was thrown) out of bed. I returned it with the warning that if it fell again, he wouldn’t get it back until tomorrow.

“Cheese??? Cheese???”

Like a sucker, I went downstairs for more cheese.

And when I tried to leave again, there was much more crying and fussing.

I went back on our five minute rule, saw the whole stick of cheese in the crib, took it, agreed to give (half) of it back, gave a short in-crib snuggle, then left again.

There was about 2, maybe 3 minutes of crying.

I got to watch Ugly Betty in its entirety. For the first time this season!

I’m a little blue about string cheese being a substitute for me, but it is what I wanted. It is, I suspect, what I need to do to get pregnant again. And it is nice to be able to come back downstairs after a much shorter bedtime ritual.

And I know that helping Noah learn to fall asleep independently is good for him. I’m doing the right thing for him and for our family. But I’m a little blue about it.