My 15 Month Old Still Breastfeeding and Obsessed with My Boobies!!!

Isn't it YOUR body? I have to say, that I don't know what it is like to breast feed longer then 8 months (that is when I stopped with my daughter, I dried up), but I can't seem to comprehend the fact that you allow your son to fondle you and nurse whenever he wants and you still wake up and nurse at his age. The only one to blame for him waking up, is you. You have encuraged and enforced this habit (that's all it is...a habit)
If your done...then be done. He doesn't give up because you always give in....he knows he will get his way, and that is weakness on your part. Yes, it will be hard for a week or so, but he will eventually forget, and start sleeping through the night. You will have to be consistant and pacient and never give in again. But, you will never know unless you stop breast feeding.
Tell him your boobs have boo boos and there is no more milk. Whatever works, you might even have to go as far as putting band-aids on your nipples.
However you do it, it will be worth the extra sleep and peace of mind.
Sorry to sound so harsh, but sometimes we need a kick in the butt to set things in motion.
I wish you luck!

You can stop nursing him at night and still let him nurse during the day. Tonight tell him that you won't let him nurse if he wakes up, so he needs to just go back to sleep. Then, when he wakes up, just refuse to nurse and put him back to bed. Tell him he can nurse when it's morning, when it's light, when the sun comes up, or whatever else you can say to make him realize that dark = sleep, not nursing. It will probably take about a week, and you've got to be strong, but he'll get it. It's obvious that he's a little cuddle-bug and loves to nurse, so I would let him. He is still getting the benefits of breastmilk, with your superior immunity passed on to him through it, not to mention your cuddling and nurturing.

I speak from experience -- I weaned my younger son both night and day in an effort to alleviate the night-time nursing, because I was sleep deprived as well. It worked (took a week, as I said above), but he became even more clingy and needy, so I would recommend letting him continue to nurse during the day for a while, and just cut out the night feedings, which should cut out the night wakings. When he doesn't have it to look forward to any more, but instead can only look forward to "mean mommy" putting him straight back to bed, he will start sleeping through the night.

Go to a La Leche League meeting - a toddler-centered one, if you can find it, but any LLL meeting will do. There are experienced women there who have been through it, and can help you deal with your situation in a sensitive and loving manner.

I would cut his feedings out a couple at a time. Waking up 4 or 5 times at night to nurse at his age is too often. Cut 2 feedings, wait a few days, cut two more, wait a few days, then you can be left with the night ones by making sure he is good and full when he goes to sleep, and then when he wants you, offer him water and cuddles instead. It will be hard for a little while but you have to be consistent or you'll both go nuts! Good luck...

That happened to me, too. I finally picked a long weekend and decided that was the time he was going to be weaned. At night, I put on a sports bra, a shirt and another long sleeved shirt to bed. When he woke up ready to nurse, I went in as usual but he couldn't get to the boob. The first night was really hard. He cried and cried but the whole time I hugged him and told him I loved him. The second night was hard, too. Then he got used to it. I was able to get him back to sleep just by snuggling. Then...guess what? He started sleeping through the night!!

Hi K.

I think you pretty much described the pros and cons of breastfeeding:) I am thinking if there is a way for you to get your good night sleep while keeping the bonding with your son.. I breastfed my son till 23 months old, but I stopped night feeding early. How about trying stopping the night nursing first? You could either take one feeding out at a time (though it might take a while if he wakes up 4-5 times now) or just stop cold turkey. At 15 months, he will NOT miss the nutrient from the missed night feeding, as long as he eats & nurses well during the day. Keep the day time feeding for now, but after you succeed in weaning him off the night feeding you may also start to reduce the frequency of the daytime feeding. Keep the most important ones for him - the ones before bedtime or naptime or first thing in the morning, depending on his habits. I think if you can manage to cut off the night nursing and maintain the daytime nursing, you can have the best of both world, so to speak. I know he will be sad in the beginning at night, but believe me he will not 1)be hungry, 2) need the nutrients, and 3) remember at all, and he will sleep better too. I kept 2 nursings a day from around 18 months old, and only stopped nursing (at about 23 months) when I was extremely uncomfortable during my second pregnancy. best of luck to you!

Interesting side note - I have a 15 m.o. daughter that has started sticking her hand down ladies' shirts (me, my mom, my cousins, etc.) and patting their boobs! She only breastfed for four months, so I don't know where this is coming from 11 months later! Maybe it is just the age?

My daughter's 2 and a half and still loves the booby. However, at around 2 (wasn't planning on weaning till at least 2 due to WHO guidlines and direction from pediatrician), I noticed the more I try to discourage it the more she wanted it so I decided to let her self wean. If I let her have it any time she wants except in public she doesn't seem to want it as much. Now she's down to 2-5 times a day, more on Mondays after she's been in daycare all day after a whole weekend with mommy. My MIL who was not understanding of the nursing thing at first said that all kids do things in their own time and if she's not ready to wean then don't push it. Aside from the nursing thing, my daughter has exceeded all milestones by at least three months and up to a year. She's been potty trained for months, says please and thank you, can count to 20, knows all her letters and can sing the alphabet forwards and backwards. So I figure I'll let her slide on this one:) Either way, it's up to you as a parent. I'd suggest just letting him feed when he wants. Then he won't want it as much, plus he will be less likely to want to eat at night if he's had more milky in the daytime. I also put my daughter to bed later so she'll sleep through the night.

When my daughter was 23 months I stopped nursing her. ( I was going on vacation w/out her) I simply put band aids on my nipples, and told her they had boo boos. It took maybe a week, and now she is fine, without nursing! She woke up in middle of night and asked for them, and I told her they had boo boos, she asked to see them with the band aid on, which i let her do, and then snuggled me and went back to sleep. I have a friend who did the same with her 18 month old daughter and it worked like a charm as well. =) Good luck and be patient...

My daughter was a boobie addict when she was 15 months. She also woke up a lot at night just to make sure they were still there. :) When she was 18 months old I got sick and was put on a medicine that would get in her system. It was so hard to quit feeding her but I had to without warning. She was crazy for a couple of days and then she finally got over. I, on the other hand, regret not asking for a type of medicine that I could have nursed with. I still miss it terribly. If you really want to quit, I would cut out a feeding every couple of days until he is weaned. Congrats on being able to nurse this long.

I also have a boobie obsessed boy! He started at 15 months with the hand down my shirt, in my bra, grabbing my nipples. He just turned 3 and is still doing it!! Needless to say I am soooooo done with it! I have started wearing polo shirts buttoned up and telling him mamas milk is all gone. He will say I want to hold mamas milk. I just say hug my neck, I will hold you, rock you, etc. I totally feel for you! My doctor recommended putting bandaids on my chest and saying mommies owie, my son took them off. Yours might be a little young for that. My advice is to get rid of the night feedings. I know it is HARD! At 8.5 months I was getting up every 1-2 hours and I was soooo tired. I am not a fan of cry it out at all, but he was eating solids and wasn't hungry, just needed comfort of sucking. I let him cry it out for 3 nights and then he slept through the night. I would say it had to be 5 am before I nursed him again in our bed and he would fall back asleep next to me until about 7-8am. He gave up a pacifier at 6 months old. I nursed him for 20 months and finally it was enough. He was throwing tantrums and wanted it all the time and would come up and help himself. I might as well just walked around shirtless! :)

Start now with discouraging it, trust me it is wayyyyyy harder to break them as they get bigger and stronger.

Good luck!

Oh my gosh, I am going thru the exact same thing you have described here!! How did you finally stop??? =)

you are in charge. you set the rules. if you genuinely want to stop, you will put him on a schedule and wean him. if he's in charge, your life will be run by him and you'll never sleep.

My daughter bf until she was around 2 yo, but I had to cut the night feedings around 15 months. I told her that at night, mommies boobies were sleeping and I offered her a cup with water at night. She kind of fussed, but it didn't take too long. a night or so. I also changed my sleep shirts, so she couldn't get to them. I had been wearing nursing tanks, and she figured out how to help herself... =)
Good luck!
R.

My mother went through that with her youngest. Usualy she stopes breastfeeding when we got our teeth.(she had 6 kids.) what she did was give the 16-month-old baby formula whenever he reached for her breast. Also when he reached for she'd slap his wrist away. It was just a tap but enough force for him to pull away. Yes he would start to cry but she just ignored him and he would stop crying once he saw he wasn't getting atention. soon his addiction went away

My son nursed until just before his 2nd birthday. Like yours, it felt like he was a boob addict. I nursed constantly and was starting to fear there was no end in sight. Thankfully, we had cut out the night nursing when he was around 6 months old. Before we did that, he was waking up every two hours (e.g., six times a night!) to nurse. We did a combination of cry it out and having my husband go in and rock him so that he wouldn't smell the milk on me and try to nurse. It was really hard, but within a couple of days he was sleeping almost through the night. Of course, there were hiccups along the way with teething and illnesses, but we never night-nursed again.

For the daytime nursing, I did a lot of research and went to a couple of La Leche League meetings. They are huge advocates of self-weaning. Some of the suggestions I received and tried were to delay nursing sessions by offering food/water/distractions with toys, to avoid favorite nursing spots and positions (like a favorite nursing chair or even just sitting), to tell him that we don't nurse in public and then stay out of the house as much as possible. All these were hit or miss, depending on the day.

What actually got him to wean completely was that he bit me and then I put the band-aids on my boobs and told him they had owies. By the time he was 2, he understood what that meant. I don't think he would have at 15 months.

Thank goodness I never had to deal with the hand down my shirt thing. I have a couple of friends whose sons did that, and they're doing it still months after they've weaned. Maybe try wearing shirts with a higher neck?

Good luck!

I understand EXACTLY what you are saying. The good news is that it does eventually stop. But I'm sorry to say that it will go on for much longer than you are comfortable with. Even a long time AFTER you've weaned, he will continue to touch you, mess with your boobs, pull your shirt, put his hand up your shirt, etc.

If he is anything like my younger son (or a friend's son -- she and I have commiserated with on several occasions about how annoying this is) it will continue for years, though decrease. My friend says that her son is so involved with her breasts that she knows EXACTLY what type of woman her son will someday bring home -- well, the front of her anyway, but I digress.

I didn't night-wean my son until he was 2 years old or overall until he was 3. We co-slept so that I could get some sleep, because he got most of his milk at night. We learned how he could keep eating without waking me totally. I wasn't ready to give it up, no matter how annoying it was to keep him from touching me all the time, lol.

When he was 18- or 19-months old he ended up in the ER (febrile seizures). When I got there he was screaming and bucking in the arms of his SAH Dad (my husband). I walked in, asked if I could lay down on the table, grabbed our son and breastfed him down. Took minutes. If you can keep going for just a little longer, this is a really great tool in your tool box.

But I understand if you're "done" -- and he needs to be done when YOU are. So if that's your decision I stand by it, regardless.

That said, get this book: "The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers" by Pantley. She has some GREAT ways to get him to sleep both with and without breastfeeding. I used some of her ideas when I was night-weaning, and they worked REALLY well.

As for the inappropriate touching, all I did was to be consistent with removing his hands and saying no. I didn't know what else to do. He's 5 and he occasionally STILL does this (and my friend's son still does, too) Though much, much less frequently. It will take constant reminders.

So much good luck to you!

You'll get thru it. You just have to formulate a plan that works for the 2 of you and stick to it, no matter what. I was there too. I nursed my son until he was 2. He was addicted, to say the least! He was lifting my shirt up fairly young as well... like at a year old. Everyone's situation is different, my son also had a pacifier--again...addict! IMO that made things easier. Here is what I did... 1st cut out night feedings. That was really excruciating for us both! I'd hold him/ rock him then put him down and he'd scream for an hour. I'd sit by his crib, pat his back etc. It was a nightmare!!! Eventually I stopped picking him up in the middle of the night, he finally caught on, but it took a while...STUBBORN!!! ;) Then I cut out during the day feedings. I never used the band-aids, but LOVE that idea. We were down to bf'ing at waking, nap and before bed. The waking and nap were easier to stop because I could distract him after waking in the morning, and he fell asleep in the car a lot and transferred for nap. It was that last one before bed that was the hardest. So I resorted to a bottle of 1 ounce of diluted cows milk. He was used to that on nights I was gone, so it wasn't totally foreign to him. It was a bit weird for him to have it from me. But I never caved and things were fine. Eventually that one ounce turned to straight water. It was a long process, but I had one attached little boy. Again, we all have different situations and limits. You can get thru this, don't be too hard on yourself. I wish you peace with this.

Oh my goodness, you are not alone and I guessed you had a little boy before I clicked on your post!:) There is something about little boys and there mommies:) Your story was my story! I nursed my daughter till she was 16 months but my son nursed all the time till he was 20 months and he was obsessed with my nipples long after that. Even now at age 4 1/2 he puts his hand on his own nipple while sleeping. It's his comfort thing and I'm assuming it will not last into adulthood:) Do a search on Momapedia for this and you will find you are not alone! Others have asked this before:) Good luck!