Nobody warns you that weaning has two sides, and that one of them belongs entirely to you. Everyone talks about the child. Is he too old for this? Is he ready? Will he struggle? Nobody asks the mother what it costs her to be the one who ends it. I am the one who decides when it stops. I am the one who has to look at my son and take something away that he loves, that soothes him, that has been ours since the day he was born, and do it on purpose, with a plan, while he has barely any real say in it. That is a strange kind of heartbreak, and almost nobody names it.
This bond is one of the biggest things shaping his life so far, quietly, in the background of everything else, and somehow it's the part almost nobody sits down to actually talk about.
And before I go any further, I want to say something plainly, because I have heard it too many times to let it pass. People love to say that after a certain point breastmilk "isn't real anymore, it's basically water." It is not water. There is no version of me still doing this at two, at two and a half, still nursing him to sleep every single night, if what I was giving him were water. That line gets repeated so often that people believe it without ever checking it, and it is simply not true.
There's actual research behind why this stage hits mothers so hard too, not just sentiment. Breastmilk composition doesn't dilute with time, it tends to get richer in fat and calories as a baby moves into toddlerhood, pretty much the opposite of what people assume. And weaning itself comes with a real hormonal shift, oxytocin and prolactin dropping fast after months or years of your body running on them, which is part of why some mothers describe something close to grief, or even a real dip into depression, right around the moment everyone else expects relief or congratulations.
I didn't know any of that until I went looking for it myself, mid weaning, wondering why something I'd worked so hard for could still leave me wanting to cry in the shower some nights. Other mothers online describe almost the exact same thing, which told me I wasn't imagining it, and I wasn't overreacting either.
I also want to say this before the story itself, because it matters more than anything else here. This has been gentle weaning, slow and about as gentle as it gets. I had the time to prepare, the ability to plan around trips and routines, a son with a strong relationship with food since he started solids, and a life stable enough to let this stretch out over almost a year. That is not everyone's reality, and I know it.
Some mothers have no warning at all, milk that has to stop for medical reasons, a return to work with no room for a slow goodbye, a baby too young to understand any of it who just cries without knowing why. If that has been you, I am not writing this to suggest you did it wrong, or that gentle was ever available to you. I am writing this because even in the best version, the version with time and choice and a partner who almost never pushed, this has still been hard. If it was hard for me, with everything working in my favor, I don't know how it must feel for the mothers who didn't get any of that.
From the very start, when Ian came home from the hospital, I made one decision that shaped everything that came after. No bottle, no dummy, once he was exclusively on the breast. I wanted fewer things to eventually take away. When he was ready for something other than breastmilk, I gave it to him in a cup, sometimes with a straw. That single choice at the beginning is a big part of why the end has been able to move so slowly and so gently. There was only ever one thing to unwind.
Ian has connected to stories more than almost anything else for as long as I can remember. If a character exists, he doesn't just listen to it, he becomes it, fully, for as long as the story lasts. So months before I ever started weaning him, I built him a character. His name is Tuca. I told Ian small Tuca stories at bedtime, in the bath, wherever a story fit, long before weaning was even on the table.
Slowly, over two or three months, I let Tuca start wanting something new. Tuca decided he didn't need boo boo milk anymore, boo boo being Ian's own word for breastfeeding since he was old enough to say it. I built that idea patiently, a little at a time, not all at once. Eventually I showed Ian an actual, physical copy of a book built around Tuca and that same idea, so he could hold it, see it was real, not just something he heard at night. That book exists now. It's called No More Boo-Boo Milk, I'm an Astronaut Now, and it grew directly out of the character I had already been building with him for months. It wasn't written to sell him on weaning, and it wasn't written to only work for him either. It became the weaning story because that's exactly what a story like this is for.
Writing that book still means more to me than almost anything else I've made. It's a story about getting ready, about a character brave enough to reach for something bigger, space and adventure and the kind of leap that takes courage. Near the end there's a small, quiet moment where he makes his own choice to let go, not because someone told him to, but because he felt ready, because the next thing was calling him and he was brave enough to answer it. That moment was never really about Ian, it's the same moment any child moves through when they're finally ready to let go of something, in their own time, in their own way. The book was one part of how we did this, never the whole of it, but it did more than I expected it to. That's what I hope other mamas find in it too, not a copy of our story, but a door into their own child's.
Ian played with the idea for close to three months. Some days he'd announce, completely sure of himself, "I am just like Tuca, I don't need it." Other days, usually in the evening when he was tired, it would flip. "No, I need it, I'm not ready." Both were true at once, and I let them both be true. I didn't correct him for going back and forth. That back and forth was the actual work of him getting ready, even when it looked like nothing was moving.
“I am just like Tuca, I don't need it.”
“No, I need it, I'm not ready.”
The whole process, from the first feed we dropped to the last one still standing, unfolded slowly and on purpose, starting around the time Ian turned two. I could have moved faster at almost every stage. I chose not to, because I wanted this done with patience and care, not rushed just to get it over with.
We started with the day feeds, plural, because that's really what they were. Not one feed to unwind, but three or four separate moments in a day, a feed around ten in the morning, another around two in the afternoon, and whatever comfort feed he asked for when he was overtired, hurt, or just having a rough day. I kept the wake up feed exactly as it was through that whole stretch, that one had its own timeline still to come.
So when he came to me asking, I would hug him, kiss him, and give it to him, but every single time I said some version of the same thing. I'm going to give it to you, but soon we're going to have to stop, because mama's boo boos need rest and get ready for the night. So when you come at night, there will be plenty of milk for you. I repeated some version of that for about a week, a week and a half, until it started to sink in on its own. After that I leaned on distraction instead, a book, a toy, a thought he loved, anything that could pull his attention somewhere else before the ask fully landed, and more often than I expected, it actually worked, he would just forget. For a few weeks around that same time he also asked for what he calls a "smally," his own invented word for the tiniest possible bit, a sip that lasted five seconds or less. I would check in with him in those moments, and if it felt real, not just a passing want, I'd let him have his few seconds on each side, just enough to settle him.
Around that same stretch, completely on his own, with no prompting from me, Ian decided he was done with naps. That helped more than I expected, because the nap had long been tied to nursing, and nursing to relaxing, and relaxing to falling asleep, one long chain of association hooked together. Take away the nap, and a link in that chain just disappeared on its own. On the days he still pushed, and cried, and clearly needed it, I gave it to him. This was never about withholding, only about slowly making room for something else.
Then one day I told him straight. Today is our last day having the boo boos. We have to say goodbye, and after this we're only going to have boo boos at night. Is that okay? He looked at me and said, "yeah mom, that's okay, I understand." That was it. That's the whole method, if you can even call it that, patience, time, care, love, warning him ahead of time, and giving him space to feel like part of the decision was his, even though realistically, left entirely to his own devices, he probably would have shown up to his first day of college still asking for boo boos. That's just who he is, too, he tends to accept things once they've been properly explained to him, even when part of him doesn't want to.
Understanding something and being ready to lose it are not the same thing, and the nights would prove that all over again. Once the day feeds were settled, I started night weaning, and this time I actually did use a trip we had planned as the marker. I told him ahead of time that during that trip, the night wake up feeds would stop, but he would still have one to fall asleep and one when he woke in the morning. The first night was hard, not quite as hard as I had braced myself for, but still painful for both of us. He cried, hard, for close to two hours, and somewhere inside that crying was a boy at war with himself, with me standing right in the middle of it.
One moment he'd say, "leave me alone." Two seconds later he'd reach for me, "hug me tight." He'd push my hands away, "don't touch me, mama," and in almost the same breath ask, "why aren't you giving me something I love so much? Why are you doing this to me?" At one point, sobbing, he told me, "I don't like you now," and before that could even land, he broke straight back into tears, "hug me," "I love you," all tangled together, like his own body couldn't decide which feeling was true. None of it was true and all of it was true at the same time, the way it only can be when you're not yet three and your whole world is shifting under you.
So I stayed. I didn't take "don't touch me" personally, and I didn't hold back on "hug me" either. I just kept saying no gently, every time he asked, and kept my arms open the whole time in between. If you have ever stood in that exact spot with your own child, wanted and pushed away in the same five minutes, you already know there is nothing else quite like it. Nobody prepares you for how much love can look like anger when a child is losing something he doesn't have the words for yet, or for how much it costs you to stay standing there anyway.
Progress came fast after that first night. The second came down to an hour, an hour and a half. The third, about forty minutes. By the fourth, he didn't ask at all. I kept the two remaining feeds, the one to fall asleep and the one in the morning, for a while after that before touching either of them again.
About four to six weeks after the night feeds had settled, we dropped the morning feed too. Same method again, told him ahead of time it was ending, and replaced it with a new ritual instead, wake up, get out of bed, go to the bathroom, brush his teeth, then have a nice cup of fresh milk. He does well with structure, and that one went smoothly, almost easily, compared to everything before it.
Ian is two years and ten months now, and the only feed left is the one before sleep. Honestly, I'm not sure anymore whether I'm the one still holding onto that one, or whether it's him. When he realizes it's almost time for it, he lights up completely, sweet and happy, a little smug about it, like he's been looking forward to his favorite part of the day since breakfast. There's a whole ritual around it now. He asks me every evening, "is it evening?", because he already knows that's when it happens. Before the feed, I ask him what happens if he wakes up during the night, and he tells me, every time, "no more boo boos, just carinhos and love, I will be kind to you, mama." Carinhos is a word we use in Portuguese for that small physical affection, hugs, cuddles, gentle touches, and hearing him promise me that, unprompted, in his own words, still catches me off guard every time.
I've taught him he's allowed to feel and express anything, including crying, but that he's not allowed to be rude or mistreat me, even when he's upset, because even when we're hurting inside, we try not to hurt the people who love us too. We are both still emotionally attached to this last feed, him and me about equally, and if I'm honest, I don't know yet when either of us will be ready to let it go.
Even now, on nights when he's feeling nostalgic, he still asks for a "smally," that same five second sip, and I still decide in the moment whether it's something real he needs or just a passing want, the same as I did all those months ago with the day feeds.
I don't have a tidy ending for you here, because there isn't one yet. This story is still going. Some nights I think we're close to the end of it, and other nights I'm not sure I want us to be. What I can tell you is that the years of this, the closeness, the quiet weight of him settling against me in the dark, his hand resting on me while he drinks, all of it has to be let go of on purpose, piece by piece, by me.
Nobody prepares you for how much that costs. I don't think there's a way to make it not cost something.
When you do get a choice in it, what you can choose is how gently you let it go, and whether you let your child feel safe the whole way through it, even while he's losing something he loves. And when you don't get that choice, when it has to happen fast or without warning, that's not a measure of how much you love him either.