Types of weaning

I'm Emma Pickett and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself "Makes Milk" that was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end and I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end too. Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk and of course breastfeeding and chestfeeding are a lot more than just making milk. Let's start by talking about how breastfeeding journeys end. How does weening happen whether it's parent-led or child-led? What are some of the options? One option is self-weaning, what we sometimes call child-led weaning. This is when the child completely takes the lead that they gradually reduce the breastfeeding on their own terms as their needs are met in different ways, as they gradually realize that they don't need breastfeeding, they become less emotionally dependent on it and that process is slow and gentle and it will take weeks and months rather than days. If a child is going to self-wean, when might we actually expect that to happen? You might see references online to the worldwide average age of weening but I'm not sure that's an entirely useful concept, I'm not the only person to think that. When you're thinking about weening, I would signpost you to the work of Catherine Deweiler. She's an anthropologist, she does a lot of work on the natural age of weening. She points out that we live in a society where there's a huge variation and worldwide, there's a huge variation. We've got some people breastfeeding for just a few days, just a few weeks, going back to work outside the home and we've got other societies where people have less cultural pressure to need to embrace feeding. With that massive worldwide variation, is it super useful to try and come up with some kind of average? She talks about a study being done prior to the 1940s where 64 traditional and invertechomas societies were studied and in those societies the median duration of breastfeeding was around 2.8 years. But what's probably more useful is to try and switch off some of the cultural noise around how long we breastfeed for and let's think of humans as just being like other large primates. The Cathy Deweiler did some work comparing us to other primates and to see what biologically would be normal for us. So she picked six comparison tools and she said, "Okay, let's look at when first permanent mole is emerged because that's often a time of weening in primates. For humans, that will be around 6 years old." She said, "Okay, gorillas and chimpanzees breastfeed for around 6 times the length of their babies gestation. If we apply that market to humans, that puts us at around 4.5 years." Larger mammals often nurse their infant until they've quadrupled in birth weight. That puts humans at around 2.5-3.5 years. She said, "Other primates nurse their infants until they're about a third of their adult weight. For humans, that puts us around 5-7 years and boys would breastfeed longer than girls in that situation." The non-human primates breastfeed until their children are about halfway to sexual maturity. That would put humans at around 7 years. Then she said, "Let's look at when we completely develop our immune system. Humans don't have a fully mature immune system until they're about 6 years of age. It would make perfect sense that evolution is hoping that we'll have access to the active immunity provided by breast milk until that point around 6 years." She points out that while a point out that list could have gone on and on, she could have used lots of other comparables. When you just use those markers, we're looking at the natural weaning age for humans to be around 2.5 years to 7 years old. What do other breastfeeding experts say if you look at someone like Kelly Bonjata who runs kelemom.com on that website it talks about self-weaning happens when a child is typically well over a year old, more commonly over 2 years old. At the point where they get most of their nutrition from solids, they can drink independently from a cup and they've cut down on nursing gradually. If a child ends breastfeeding abruptly, if they're not getting their nutrition and liquids from somewhere else, something else is going to be going on. We often term that a nursing strike. A nursing strike is a temporary response to other factors. It could be illness, particularly something causing oral pain, something like hand-footed and mouth disease, for example, where the blisters are making it uncomfortable to breastfeed. It could be that there's another negative association between the breast that's developed suddenly. Quite a common trigger for a nursing strike is a biting incident. So typically a nersling bites a parent. The parent Yelps. The child is completely freaked out, which leaves the parent feeling terrible because they completely blame themselves for having frightened their child and leaves the child feeling very wary of coming back to the breast again. A really tough situation for everyone to be in. I have written a couple of articles about nursing strikes and breast refusal, which you can find online if you want to delve into that a bit more deeply, or if you're going through that yourself at the moment. What gets really complicated when we're talking about the definition of weaning is that sometimes nursing strikes do stick. Not often, especially if a child is younger and they were previously breastfeeding frequently, breastfeeding will often resume. But if a child is older, if there were maybe only breastfeeding a couple of times a day, if they didn't particularly have an emotional attachment to the breast, if they weren't dependent on the breast for sleep, for example, they may not resume breastfeeding even after that fairly abrupt ending. I've known some nursing to restart after 10 days, sometimes after a few weeks. I've known some nursing who resume breastfeeding but partially, and what I mean by that is that they may breastfeed maybe when they're asleep or nap time, but they don't want to initiate breastfeeding when they're awake and alert. Do we call that child a weaning? Do we call that self-weaning? It's really hard for a parent to know when to give up trying, especially when all the literature is saying, "Oh, it's going to be this is a nursing strike, this isn't self-weaning. You're essentially saying to a parent, you've got to keep going. You shouldn't accept this as the end of breastfeeding." Self-weaning is not always easy for a parent anyway, but it's especially tough when it seems to come out of nowhere and it seems to be abrupt, like through a strike, for example. Is it possible that a parent whose child has initially had a nursing strike and they're not resume breastfeeding? Can they use that term "self-weaning"? I mean, I guess who gets to kind of gatekeep that term "self-weaning" who makes the definitions and controls them? I've met some parents who really struggle to know what definitions they're almost allowed to use, allowed being in a verticommer's. So I spoke to a mum that I interviewed for one of my recent books who described herself as having a child that self-weened. She very much believed that. Then she did her training as a peer supporter and in her training, she was repeatedly given the message that children do not self-wean under two years old. And then she started to look back on her own breastfeeding journey with this real sense of grief and loss that she had not previously experienced. She really felt like she'd failed, that she should have encouraged a child to breastfeed for longer, because this external definition that she was being told did not fit with her own experience. And I think we need to be really, really careful when we suggest that there is a concrete minimum age for self-weaning. On my Instagram reels, you can find a conversation with someone I had recently, this is mid-July, with someone called Liz. Her two children, both self-weened under 18 months, and I defy you to listen to that conversation and not feel that she is entitled to use the term self-weaning, because those children really did gradually wind down and choose to come to an end themselves. And even when self-weaning is welcomed by a parent, even if there is nothing doing this in strike, it's absolutely the parents proud that that's what their child is doing. They feel really good that their child is taking the lead. Their can still sometimes be unexpected emotions for the parent and emotional consequences. And I spoke to peer support to Hannah about her own weaning experience. Hannah Barker, thank you very much for joining me. It's really great to talk to you about your breastfeeding experience. You're actually a peer supporter aren't you, a breastfeeding peer supporter? Yes, I am, yeah. I'm a trainee breastfeeding counselor which I absolutely love. Brilliant. So you're going to be able to talk about this from a different perspective. But today we're focusing very much on your personal breastfeeding journey and what happened with your daughter. Tell me about how her breastfeeding journey ended and how that was for you. So she, about 18 months, I thought she was just never going to stop. Like she was feeding back when she was a newborn. So I thought, oh, maybe I'd always plan to let her wean herself. I thought, oh, maybe I'm going to end up having to do that. sort of leave this myself about 18 months I thought she'll be going forever if I don't stop there. And then about 20 months she sort of stopped feeding to sleep. She'd have her bedtime feed and then she'd just climb off and get into her cot which was again a bit unheard of because she hadn't really slept in her cot ever. It was quite an expensive laundry basket you know. So she just got in and went to sleep and I was a bit like oh okay that's odd but that carried on. So before that you'd been bed sharing had you? Yes we'd been bed shared from when she was about three or four weeks old. We'd tried her next to me but she just wouldn't settle and we just couldn't get any sleep any other way so we just thought we'll just roll with this so she had been in with us for yeah basically till she was nearly two. Gosh what was it? Do you think on that day that made her kind of point to the laundry basket and say that's where I want to sleep? Was it anything special happened that day? What was the transition do you think? I'm not sure I just I think she had stopped napping she stopped napping and she'd stopped feeding to sleep for her napps obviously because she didn't nap anymore and I think maybe to her like falling asleep was something she sort of did at the breast and then when she stopped napping in the day she just kind of that I don't know whether that sleep association kind of changed for her maybe but she yeah she just all of a sudden decided no one's done and she settled herself asleep and that was I did actually cry that evening because I thought oh this is this is not quite what I'd like the bedtime feed it was like one of my favourite feeds to do so it was like oh my favourite feeds now gone like what am I going to do now? Well that must have been really tough so it's funny how even when you are half thinking oh I'm not sure I can carry on like this forever when it actually does come that they take the lead you had that emotional reaction that was completely natural. It surprised me a little bit so so yeah then she about two again she just stopped feeding she was sleeping through the night it was just like all of a sudden she just I woke up one morning and she'd not woken up at all to feed and and I was a bit surprised I thought that's going to be a fluke that's going to be a fluke she's not going to do that again and then she just carried on not waking up in the night for her for her night feeds and again we'd she'd always been awake two or three times into toddlerhood to have a feed and then back to sleep. So that night that she stayed in her cot did she from then on always not have a bedtime feed was that that was it then she would feed before she went to sleep but she would never feed to sleep anymore or she just she would unlatch herself then climb into bed and then go to sleep so she kind of changed I guess change that association like it settled her but then she told that she could go to sleep on her own and then she was waking up during the night you were coming through when she was in her cot yeah yeah taking her out feeding her putting her back in the cot again isn't okay yeah that must have been a bit hard for you because if someone who's used to co-sleeping and you know feeding half a wake you had to like physically get up and I have to wake up properly yeah which was yeah it was a big shock to the system I remember like in the newborn days when I was trying to settle there and put her into her crib and she just wasn't having any of it and it was that kind of you have to be a properly awake to deal with these things or you know when we were when we were triple feeding sometimes I'd have to get up to make formula and you have to wake yourself properly up and it's it completely unsettles you as well because trying to go back to sleep when you're properly awake is a lot harder yeah that's intense so so that morning you woke up and she hadn't woken up did you rush to the cot to make sure she was okay how did you feel yeah because I woke I think I did wake up before her so I was a little bit like oh is she like is she okay is she all right and then she was just yeah I woke her she sort of woke up when I got their kind of thing and she was yeah and then after that it was yeah she would sometimes wake up before me but generally she'd just yeah just sleep through it was only um probably if she was ill or if she was teased and or anything she might obviously wake up but even then she wouldn't wouldn't want feeding back to sleep she'd want to cuddle rather than feeding back to sleep at that point I would offer and she wasn't interested wow so she's two at this point uh yes yeah two yet and in the day what's happening with her breastfeeding um she obviously had dropped her nap feed so that was one that had gone but she was by this point I think she was mostly feeding just in the morning when she woke up and then before bed before she went to sleep and then would occasionally have one in the day if she'd fallen over in her SL for if she needed to regulate because it was so that she'd had a we'd had a busy day or something but generally it was only two or three feeds during the day by this point and short ones at that as well wow so you never really had to take any kind of lead around ending the breastfeeding you literally did nothing yeah I just yeah if anything I tried to get her to feed more sometimes and she just wasn't having it it was very much she had decided that this was what she wanted to do and she was happy and comfortable with that and she just yeah and the other guy couldn't really have asked for an easier or nicer end really because she was very much I always wanted at her wean herself and that is what happened yeah and I was a breastfeeding supporter you definitely had no sort of noise around you telling you that you had to end breastfeeding at a certain time you were you know obviously well educated about the reasons to continue so yeah I was more than I was no no no pressure from you in this at all and no no she wasn't getting noise from anyone else around her no her dad's been amazingly supportive he would have you know he would continue to support me however long I fed her like originally like her grandparents some of them were a little bit dubious about the breastfeeding because they hadn't breastfed themselves and they obviously had a bit of uncomfortable around that but after a while they never mentioned it or never said anything about that my mum fed my siblings a couple of them till they were two so again I had that around I had had that around me when I was growing up so to me it was quite natural to carry on as long as she wanted to so you're down to this morning feed and pre bed time feed and tell me about how that those feeds finally drifted away and ended again it was just one morning she woke up and she said 'Mommy can we go for breakfast?' and she didn't she didn't ask to feed and I was like 'okay maybe she'll eat and then she'll have a feed and she didn't' and that was how that one dropped the next day was the same it was just the pre bed time feed and the next day was the same so we were down I think for the last I think that was probably when she was about two and three months by this point I think and yeah she just got up wanted to have actual breakfast and then then that was that that was that one that's that feed gone the last I'd say three months she was quite on and off the last I think six weeks she didn't even feed every day necessarily in the evening she kind of dropped down to every other day and one yeah one day I just I realized when I woke up the next morning she didn't feed before bed either so she hadn't had that feed either and again the next that day she then fed in the evening but then it was it was two days then it was three days so it was the bed time like the pre bed time feed that went last and I think the longest she went before she stopped was about five days and I thought oh this is the end now like we're nearly two and a half she's decided she's not going to feed anymore I wasn't really prepared or ready for I thought you know lots of people continue with the bed time feed for a really really long time when it's their last feed and so I thought oh well maybe we will just have the bed time feed for however long you know when she goes to nursery and stuff and that one then sort of dwindled out as well and then after the five days she then did feed and I was like oh okay maybe she's coming back and I think she fed two at two times that day because she'd fallen over or something like that so she'd fed two times I said oh maybe she's sort of maybe it was more like a a nursing strike than she's done and then we went ten days and then there was nothing after that she I was when we got to ten days I thought this is by far the longest she's gone I don't I don't think she's coming back now and she didn't so that was that was the end we had to fight at the beginning of our journey and I didn't want to fight for the end either so it was a really it was a really general ending for both of us really yeah and the way you describe having kind of a couple of days and a few days is a really good representation of how self-weaning does go that's so common and people often don't know when the last feed was do you have in your head what the last feed was did you think at the time this could be the last feed I had been putting it in my calendar when she had a feed when we started to get down to two or three days I was like right I'm going to put it in my calendar so I know so um she heard very last feed was July the 16th last year so just over just over a year ago now and while you were having that feed were you thinking in your head this could be the last one how did that feel it was really hard I did out like a lot of the time when when I was having those feeds I was really really treasurering them because I thought I'm not going to do this again this is this possibly is the last time I'm going to do this and um as I was a bit blindsided almost by her stopping it was very much you know, I would have carried on quite happily. So I did share a few tears, but again, like I say, I was really glad that it did end on her terms and that she was comfortable and happy to stop when she did. But yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't the easiest, like even though it was how I would have wanted it to finish, but I still had a lot of emotion around it. And there's always that sort of hormonal change as well, which I think I did cry for pretty much daily. I think for about a month after just, I just felt very down and very low and everyone noticed as well, but after that, it picked back up. Yeah, Hannah, I'm sorry, that sounds tough. And you know, as you alluded to, there's a hormonal change. You're losing that oxytocin, you're losing those oxytocin pulses that you were getting through the day. And also saying goodbye to a phase of your life, saying goodbye to, you know, being a breastfeeding mum, which is tough, especially when that wasn't necessarily, you know, I know it was your choice in one way, but not your choice in another way. It's a real sort of dilemma, isn't it? You're being pulled from two different directions. Yeah, definitely. How it felt, the important two different directions, definitely. Yeah, and you mentioned that you cried that first night when she didn't have a bedtime feed. When you were upset in the following days, was it provoked by her not wanting a feed or was it just happening at other times in the day more generally? Yeah, it was just sort of generally, and sometimes like, if, for example, I'd see a picture or a, of us in the early days or anything like that, some things like that would sort of trigger it a little bit. Like you say, it's the end of an era, isn't it? That loss of something that you had and that has been a bit, you know, obviously I did have been peer-supported and trained as a breastfeeding counsellor. So breastfeeding was a massive part of my life. So that, it did definitely feel like the end of an era. Yeah, well, I'm sure people listened to this would really, really feel for you with that. But also, I mean, an amazing achievement to a breastfed for, you know, two and a half years or so and then, and to end that so peacefully and lovingly is something you should be really, really proud of. And I hope looking back, you, you really are proud of that. Just in terms of your physical health, did you, obviously you ended very gently? So I'm guessing you didn't experience a lot of engagement or breast health issues. I mean, how did that go? Yeah, that was, again, I'm quite grateful for that. I never really had any points where I was engorged or uncomfortable and I blocked up to anything. I did occasionally leak a little bit. If so, like I heard a baby cry or something when she stopped feeding, I will say, but besides that, you know, health wise, it was, again, it probably was the best way that I could have, could have gone about it, actually. Yeah. And then after that gap of five days when she was feeding again, did she seem to be taking milk? I mean, how did you supply gradually diminished? Did you have a sense of when your production ended? Um, she, by the time she started, when she had a big gap, so the five days were whatever, when she would latch on it didn't take you the leafy look. She was latched very well and it was a little bit uncomfortable. So I'm not, I feel like at that point, she might have not been getting very much and she did occasionally say, there's nothing there, my main, my main, where has it gone? So I think that that point, it definitely got to, I don't know whether there was still a little bit and she just, because she was latched oddly, she couldn't get it or whether, because I could hand express some, but she seemed to struggle to get it herself. So I don't know whether it was her latch at that point, but had kind of made it harder for her to get any milk, but she didn't seem fast either way. I think it was as much for comfort at that point as, as any kind of nutrition. She, just liked being at the breast. And presumably as a peer supporter, kind of the breastfeeding world is very much around you. Does she ever talk about breastfeeding? Is it something you ever have a conversation about? Yeah, she does. Like if she's not very well or something, she'll cuddle up to my breast and she will be, she will say, "Oh, this makes me feel better or you know, she does," and she always says, "You fed me like that when she sees other babies and she's, she feeds her babies that way as well. She, you know, she, she tanned them feed sometimes, which is something I never did, obviously, but she sometimes has two or three babies on her at a time. So yeah, she, to her, it is completely natural. Yeah, she, she's around it because she comes to the groups and she loves seeing babies fed that way as well. She likes to watch them being fed and she's always, "Oh, babies have milkies." It was just, yes, nice. Oh, that's lovely. That's really sweet. So is there anything you want to say to anyone who's listening to this thinking, you know, how does it feel to be a self-weaning mum? Is it something I should wait for my child to take the lead on? Is it, is should I end breastfeeding if I'm struggling? I mean, what messages would you give to someone if they're trying to make a decision about whether self-weaning is right for them? Yeah, I think the main thing is, is that you're both happy with it. If, if, obviously, if you're not happy with it, you could make some changes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be all or nothing. Like, you can maybe pick a feed that you don't particularly enjoy and say, get rid of that, for example, and see if that makes it any better because there was the odd feed that I didn't particularly enjoy and I was glad when she dropped it. But yeah, it's not right for everybody, obviously, but if, if you think that you could do it and that you're still enjoying breastfeeding and that you don't, there's not a feed that you dislike or it's not making you uncomfortable or a verse or anything, then for me, it was the most natural and gentle way and I think if I, probably if I had tried to wean myself, I might have looked back and wished that I didn't do it that way personally. I think this was the right way for us, but it's not going to be the right way for everybody, but for me, I feel happy with the way it ended and content that that is gone this way and I think if I tried to stop her and then we'd stop, I might have had the same emotions of feeling sad and regret about it and I wouldn't have been able to go back and do anything about it. So this, for me, there's no regret here. Yeah, that is a nice place to be. So I'm sure there's some people listening to this who are quite jealous of you and people hoping it will happen to them. Thank you so much Anna for sharing your experience, really appreciated and good luck with the rest of your training. I'm one of the trainers on the breastfeeding council of course, so I will definitely be keeping it up for you. Thank you very much. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that there is such a thing as pure, charred, lead weaning and if we hold it up as a goal, it may not necessarily be very helpful. There is always a spectrum along the way parents will be introducing a solid food. They will be offering cups with other fluids, including other milks. Parents go out for the evening. They go and spend time with their friends away from their children. They might even go away for a weekend. Parents go back to work and sometimes their child is cared for by other adults and those other carers comfort their children in different ways and help them get back to sleep in different ways. Even the most child-led, focused parent sometimes has to go to the toilet, sometimes has to suggest that a feed happens later and as nurslings get older, negotiation in a breastfeeding relationship is completely normal and it's good because it's helping little children to understand that other people have needs. It's helping to develop their sense of empathy and their understanding that their needs cannot always come first. Sometimes parents feel that offering a cuddle instead of a breastfeed. Sometimes they would prefer not to feed in a particular location or at a particular time. They may not want to feed in public any longer. Any negotiation in a breastfeeding relationship is a parental nudge in the direction of weaning. It's also true that children pick up on cultural messaging. They see who is breastfeeding around them. They see who is depicted breastfeeding in books and on tally and they're often going to pick up on conscious comments from other adults and certainly unconscious micro expressions and expressions. It's not great but we cannot entirely protect our children who live in a society where natural term breastfeeding is not necessarily perceived as normal. So it's very difficult to write the definition of child-led weaning in stone. I talked previously about the fact you can't pin it down to a particular age but I'm not sure that concept of child-led weaning in general is something you can pin down in stone. Weaning is always a spectrum. One end of that spectrum, you've got a mother who's staying at home, continuing to breastfeed responsibly 24 hours a day, doesn't introduce bottles or artificial nipples. Solid food is introduced but they take great efforts not to move on to solids too quickly or make solids of priority too quickly. They may be absolutely adamant that their child will get to breastfeed for as long as they want to. They resist external pressures, they protect their child from the comments of others, they co-sleep and their child is absolutely the the leader in the weaning process. You know sometimes in the breastfeeding advocacy space it can feel like this is the type of weaning that we are supposed to do that we're being encouraged to do. And I think those of us are really passionate about supporting natural term breastfeeding have to be really careful we don't idealized. this image of child-led weaning as the perfect state of the way to embers feeding. You know, we're living in a world where parents are under an enormous amount of pressure. We do see posts on social media saying things like you know, every child weans at their own pace and normalize nursing to natural terms, self-weaning happens between two and seven years old where you might have a poem online which says something like the only view that matters is yours and yours alone. And we've got lots of images of natural term feeding and child-led weaning as the aspiration. And you know, that's natural when we're trying really hard to normalize continuing to breastfeed beyond infancy. I think we're in this sort of re-correction state right now. We've just really started to get to grips with using breastfeeding online and conversations about breastfeeding online as a space to really promote the idea that we can breastfeed our children beyond infancy. But we perhaps haven't quite rebalanced to realize that that needs to exist alongside a place where parents can breastfeed as long as they want to and stop breastfeeding when they want to. You know, we've got a home now for longer term breastfeeding which is bloody brilliant but if you are a mother of a two and a half year old who's breastfeeding and you're absolutely wretched and miserable and desperate to end breastfeeding it's not always comfortable to come into that world where child-led weaning is very idealised. We need to make spaces where we normalize natural term breastfeeding and spaces for child-led weaning and at the same time support parents to practice parent-led weaning if that's what they really want to do. Sometimes when parents look for information about how to practice parent-led weaning they really struggle. They are often signposted to abrupt techniques where they're encouraged to leave their child and not provide emotional support during the process and leave it up to another adult or maybe even techniques where they're encouraged to not be honest and authenticate with their child stuff like putting chili oil on nipples or nail-biting solution on nipples. Sometimes people get signposted to a technique called don't offer don't refuse and that's described as a weaning technique. Honestly I'm not sure that don't offer don't refuse is a weaning technique. I think it's a type of child-led weaning. I don't describe it as a weaning technique. It puts the parent in a very passive role in the breastfeeding relationship it gives them zero agency over their own body. I suspect that don't offer don't refuse was created by somebody who was not currently feeding a 23-month-old who asks to breastfeed every 30 to 40 minutes during the day including when you're in the supermarket queue and driving on the motorway and stir frying noodles and trying to care for a newborn. I'm also not sure it was created by somebody who was struggling with a version. I'm not sure it was created by somebody who had nipple pain because they're pregnant or somebody that was trying to work full time or certainly by someone who wanted to stop breastfeeding in the short term or median term. Even the language in don't offer don't refuse does make me feel a bit uncomfortable. I mean don't offer why not why can't you offer as part of the weaning process. Now the weaning journey is about a parent taking control of the feeding relationship and deciding their boundaries. You are modeling body autonomy you are demonstrating that these are your breasts and this is your body and sometimes you get to decide when a feed is initiated. You might want to offer because in the next hour you know you've got to do something you know you want to feed in a particular location. Now just feels like the right time. If a parent is taking control of the timing of the feeds that is sending some messages about the fact that they have agency over this breastfeeding situation. And that second part of the phrase don't refuse. Refuse is not a friendly word is it? It's not a word that suggests love and kindness. It suggests selfishness and maybe even a bit of brutality. You know every parent even the ones who aren't necessarily moving to ending breastfeeding have a right to decline a breastfeed or negotiate around a breast feed. What messages are we sending about someone having agency over their own body if every single feed request has to be complied with. If you literally cannot say no if you are not allowed to refuse. You know even a mother who doesn't intend to take any lead at all over the end of breastfeeding may sometimes need to say to their child actually actually do mind if we don't breastfeed right now. You know I've got these particular personal reasons why I'd prefer to defer is that okay with you. You know being a gentle parent means encouraging a child to develop that sense of empathy and to start them on a journey of being a caring and emotionally intelligent little person. And we do that by using this first intimate relationship to help our child understand that we have feelings to. You know if we say to a child you know do you mind if we don't breastfeed right now is it okay if we read a book and have a cuddle instead even if the child gets angry and cross about that you can still move forward and saying yeah I know I know you want to feed now I hear what you're saying but if you don't mind I'd really like to wait till a little bit later. You know that conversation is not an inappropriate conversation for even the most gentle loving parents have with their child. You know putting boundaries in place and being honest about how we feel is how relationships work. So I'm not a fan of don't offer don't refuse as a weaning technique but for lots of parents that's all they find online. If they don't want to leave their child with great art and Ellie for two nights don't offer don't refuse seems to be the only thing they're allowed to do. We need to give parents more information about supporting the end of breastfeeding and if we don't we create horror stories. You know I have come across parents who are adamant that they're going to end breastfeeding at 12 months or under 12 months because the idea of breastfeeding a toddler or an older child is too terrible. They might have seen someone else go through it or they might have really struggled themselves with their first child. And if we don't discuss weaning techniques openly, parents sometimes end up being attracted to techniques that clash with their own parenting philosophy. You know these are people who've often breastfed for many months, even years. You know they want to continue to emotionally support their child but they're not being offered techniques that allow them to do that. You know as breastfeeding supporters we have a responsibility to support weaning because that means women have agency over their own bodies. You know you cannot talk about rights to contraception and abortion rights and rights to medical care for menopause or endometriosis and ignore the fact that a woman ending breastfeeding is an extension of that same conversation. You know when babies are born we naturally focus on the human rights of the baby and their right to breast milk but over time as nursing's get older, you know those rights shift and we're talking about a woman's right to have control over what she does with her body. So when we support mother-led weaning we are being feminists. Okay a bit more on types of weaning, partial weaning is something that is useful to talk about. Lots of people think that weaning has to be an all or nothing process. Now again the definition of partial weaning is going to vary in different homes but essentially the breast is only available at certain times and the parent decides when that is. Now some people just call that breastfeeding because that's how breastfeeding always continues it always continues with a bit of negotiation but that word partial weaning maybe gives some people permission to put some restrictions in place. So you're going to restrict breastfeeding possibly to a certain location. You might say to your child that they can only breastfeed in a bedroom or in a particular chair or they can only only now breastfeed at home. You might say that breastfeeding now only happens at certain times. You breastfeed in the morning at that time and bedtime but not during the day other times. Now that's going to mean that their other co-regulation techniques and other connection activities are going to need to be inserted into that scenario. We can't simply have a no. We need to make sure that those needs are being met in other ways as well because when a child asks for a breastfeed they are asking for their needs to be met and if you're partially weaning you're going to need to think about where do those asks come from and what are the alternative ways that those needs can be met. You know partial weaning it's not just a no because if you do a no it's like putting up a brick wall. You always need to offer doors through that brick wall so you might say well the next breastfeed is going to be at this particular time so now instead do you want to do this or this. We're going to give them some choices. We're going to help them fill a sense of agency. It's not just a no. It's not just a brick wall that leaves them feeling disempowered and humiliated and angry. You know we're going to possibly need to shake things up a little bit at home around the different activities that we're offering. It may be that this is an older toddler now who's ready for different kinds of imaginative play. You might need to start to think a bit more imaginatively about ways that you can play connectively with your child. We'll pause there for now and in the next episode we'll talk about night weaning. Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on instagram at Emma Pickett iBCLC and on Twitter @MakesMilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast. This podcast is produced by the Emily Crossby Media.