Well, she's weaned.

After 39 months of nursing, Lacy is officially weaned. I got a lot of help from my great husband through this process, which started around her third birthday. That was when we started our bedtime routines, which included nursing for 5 minutes right before bed. Once Dave got put on the swing shift and wasn't there for bedtime anymore, I changed it to 5 minutes before she brushed her teeth, on the couch. Then, a couple of weeks later, Dave was back on the day shift and was home at bedtime. He started reading her the bedtime stories and tucking her in, and we haven't nursed in about a week now. I thought I would miss nursing more than this, but I guess since I had so much time with her, it is easier to let go. I loved our nursing relationship and am glad that we went for more than three years. It is much, much longer than average, at least in the US. But nursing her as long as I did, I feel comfortable knowing that I provided her with as much protection as I possibly could. I wanted to post a few pictures memorializing our nursing relationship, but for some reason my scanner isn't working (my first picture of us nursing is on film, not digital), so I'm going to have to wait on some of them.

I do know that by providing this for my daughters, they will grow up thinking of nursing as the normal way to feed a baby, and hopefully they will nurse their own children. Hopefully, by the time they are mothers, the world will be more accepting of breastfeeding mothers and doctors will understand more about it. It seems like lately there are studies that have come out that for some reason are trying to prove that breastfeeding isn't all it's cracked up to be. In the last couple of months, I've seen studies and/or articles that have come out disputing the diabetes/obesity link, increased IQ, asthma/allergies, and more (I'll try to link the rest of the articles when I find them). But IMO there are problems with all the studies that I have seen, or the news reports are taking one tiny portion of the study out of context. For example the asthma thing-- they didn't compare exclusively BF for 6 months infants with infants who were exclusively fed formula, supplemented with formula, or fed early solids (Dave has asthma, and so did his mom, and though he was exclusively breastfed, he was fed solids at 2 months old which has been shown to increase risk of allergies/asthma). But there have been positive studies, as well-- including a study that shows breastfeeding does not cause saggy breasts!

OK, I'm off to find some pictures of Miss Lacy-bug nursing, and I'll post them when I find them. There is a Blogger maintenance tonight at 11 so I'm posting now and I'll add the pictures when Blogger is back up again.

But as a teaser... here is a picture of a brand new Lacy right after our first nursing session (the other pictures of us actually nursing taken from this camera are completely blurry). TTFN!