What it's like breastfeeding my 4 yo - a day in the life (BTS Bonus Episode 2)

Tune into this episode to hear about sleep, boundaries, and more in my home right now.

Ever wonder what life might look like if you were breastfeeding a 4 year old?

Apparently, a lot of you have! Hundreds of you were curious about my current breastfeeding experience.  So, I decided to break down what it's like to breastfeed my 4-year-old.

I know it sounds like the title of a click-bait article, but the truth is, the fact that I am *still* breastfeeding my 4 year old barely enters my mind.  It's a normal (and mostly enjoyable) small part of our lives.


Also - I am sharing the toddler planner I use in my home to support ease and calm around breastfeeding and beyond. 

(It's literally the exact same one I created for my family, based on tools I have used and optimized for years)

You can grab your free printable toddler planner here. 

Want to learn more from me?
Watch my free, instant access workshop: 
Designing Your Pathway to Toddler Breastfeeding Mastery

Grab your free guide to say "No" to the feed while still saying "yes" to the need at  www.ownyourparentingstory.com/guide

Love this episode?!  Shoot me a DM over on Instagram @own.your.parenting.story and tell me all about it. <3

Transcript

(TRANSCRIPT AUTO-GENERATED)

[00:00:00] In today's behind the scenes bonus episode, I'm going to be talking about what a day in the life is like for me breastfeeding my four year old. Now, I haven't really thought that anyone would be interested in this, to be honest. It didn't really occur to me to do this type of content. podcast episode, but I had, uh, someone in my group coaching program specifically asked me about it last week.

And then when I posted about it on Instagram, you all wanted to hear about it. So that's what I'm going to be talking about. First, I want to say that I actually have a [00:00:30] download for you guys. Uh, so I'll be talking about that a little bit, but the link directly to it is in the show notes and I'll share that a little bit further in the episode.

Um, I had an accompanying download last week for last week's episode that I only gave out to the people who get emails from me regularly. But I thought this week I would share about it here and have a page that you can download it, even if you don't get emails from me already.

Um, I also want to give a little caveat. [00:01:00] This is not, like, the way my life looks is not the way that your life should look, needs to look, has to look. I'm not recommending that this is the things that you do for your family. And I also understand that many people have never I've met anyone who at least openly talks about breastfeeding their older toddler, child, and it can feel like just a big question mark, like what is it even like, right?

Like [00:01:30] the choice is basically to keep going like I am right now or to wean. But there's a third option and that's to make changes and have a different future of your breastfeeding, where you're not weaning, you're not continuing on like you are right now, you're actually creating a relationship that feels really great for both of you.

And that is. Pretty much what I have with my son. Now, if you listened to last week's episode, you'll know that I have been in a lot of stress. I've experienced a lot of stress this past year in 2023, and my life [00:02:00] has looked a lot different than it has at different times in my life, and things are not always as smooth as I would like them to be.

So that is part of my story right now. There is a little bit of an extra go with the flow attitude that I have because I have to because I only have so much energy and too much planning and too much intention is number one, it takes a lot of work and number two, it doesn't always go that way, right?

When life throws your curveballs. So that [00:02:30] happens a lot right now, even As I'm recording this, I'm recording this on Monday, and I'm hoping to get this episode up very soon after I'm done recording it, but there was a snowstorm here, and that threw our lives upside down over the weekend when I normally record the podcast episode, so it didn't get dropped first thing Monday morning like it usually does.

So those things happen, right? They happen for everyone. Um, Let's get into it then. I first, I want to share a little bit about what things looked like with my daughter. I'm not going to go into [00:03:00] too much detail. There's lots of bits of my story of breastfeeding my daughter on other podcast episodes, in my free workshop, on my Instagram.

But I want to have a little bit of a comparison between what was life, what things were like with her versus what things are like with my son. So with my daughter, um, I had a really rough beginning of breastfeeding, but eventually we kind of found our, found our groove and we were breastfeeding and, you know, all these things.

Things were tough at different [00:03:30] times with meltdowns and whatnot, but for the most part, we rolled with it once she kind of hit the one year, 18 month kind of mark. But shortly after that, just before she turned two, uh, yeah, a few months, five months or so before she turned two, I got pregnant with. And when that happened, I started experiencing more like nursing aversion, which I didn't really experience at all prior to that.

Um, which if you're not familiar with nursing aversion, it's this urge to [00:04:00] just like push your child off while they're latched. Um, I had a lot of, like, I just was, Overwhelming the body sensations I would, I would experience when she would latch. And it was incredibly stressful and I didn't know what to do.

So that played into our story, right? And like grappling with whether or not to wean or night wean or what that all looked like. So eventually I sorted things out and I share that again at different places at different times, um, but then it's just as far as the timeline went, [00:04:30] we night weaned when she basically, the day she turned two, actually, um, so her second birthday, I was pregnant with my son and night weaning went really smoothly for us.

There was, you know, like it had its moments of challenges, but it went really smoothly. And then once my son was born, I didn't create too, too much structure around breastfeeding at that point, but I did. breastfeed the two of them together a fair bit. I breastfed the two of them separately. [00:05:00] For the most part, we rolled with things as they came up.

I really relied on breastfeeding my daughter as a tool to connect, like, the two of us to find some connection time to support her to go to sleep. Um, when I night weaned, I didn't stop. Like, I still breastfed her to sleep when we night weaned. I just didn't breastfeed her throughout the night. Um, and so, yeah, I did that.

And then, as she got a little bit older, I started to [00:05:30] create more structure around when she would feed. So, not right away when my son was born, but a little bit more about breastfeeding when we woke up, breastfeeding around nap time, and then breastfeeding to fall asleep at night. There wasn't too much resistance to that for her.

Sometimes I had to remind her, um, but it was a lot of scheduling, a lot of talking about how our day was going to go each day. And I started that with her quite young. This is actually the download that I have for you. It's a [00:06:00] toddler weekly and daily planner for your toddler. So my daughter wasn't even two when we started doing that.

And we would talk each day about what we were going to do that day, the order that things would go in, and I would draw her pictures. Now this started with me using a dry erase marker on our white refrigerator, and I would map out the day. I would even draw a breast, like a big circle with kind of like a nipple in the middle, tell her when we would breastfeed.

And it was really empowering to her to know what the day was going to look [00:06:30] like. It really supported transitions. She had that concrete knowledge of when the next thing was going to happen and that helped her so much. So that is actually the download that I have for all of you. If you go to OwnYourParentingStory.

com forward slash planner, you can grab it. So what I have is like a PDF that I've created. It's based off of the one that we use currently in our home, but we've used different versions of it. You can have it laminated and use a dry erase marker. There's some details about how to do that on the PDF itself, uh, but it can [00:07:00] be really, really helpful.

I anchor, I always have, I anchor our day around food. Breakfast, snacks, lunch, dinner, right? So that is how this particular PDF is set up. You can read more about it there, I don't want to go on too long about it, but if you want some support with Creating that kind of routine for you and your family and giving your child that tool that it's really empowering for them to know what's going to happen next.

And you can start quite young and you can use it to schedule in breastfeeds if you would like to. So you can grab that and have that for [00:07:30] yourself. So I started using that with my daughter. Things went really well and yeah, we just kept rolling with it. I was breastfeeding my son and I always would breastfeed her when she would be upset or sick.

We would kind of ditch the Typical pattern that we had, and then we'd come back to that afterwards. And I never worried about having to breastfeed her outside of the times if I felt like I needed to. I would just do that. It never felt like we were moving backwards in our weaning journey. It never resulted [00:08:00] in a child that was like confused or didn't know what was going to happen.

Because kids are really present. Young kids like that are super duper present. And so What's more confusing to them is when, as an adult, we are conflicted inside. That is much more confusing to them. Or when we're angry or harsh or coming in really hot and then we're trying to, you know, pretend that didn't happen.

That's the stuff that's confusing for kids. Um, [00:08:30] not, Oh, we said we were going to breastfeed. You know, like, only at bedtime and now I was really upset and you breastfed me at 3 p. m. That stuff's not as confusing to kids. And I can tell you that from professional experience as well as personal experience with my own kids.

So, that was my daughter. She weaned at 6, uh, all on her own, essentially. I mean, I say that, but of course, I was the one who's putting those parameters around things. And with my daughter, I was really focused on the, like, When we were going to [00:09:00] feed and where we were going to feed. That was the stuff that I really supported her with.

We talked about, and she needed, yeah, she needed support with to, to, to navigate that. With, and then, yeah, she breast, she self weaned essentially at six, i. e., she was the one who said, I'm done. Uh, it was right when her, if she was basically six years old, it was like, Right around her birthday. And she was getting her first set of permanent molars.

And that's when she just decided she was done. At that point, we were down to only breastfeeding for a few moments before bed [00:09:30] each night. And yeah, that's how it happened. Uh, and then with my son. So. He was born five months before the first lockdowns of COVID, so we were in that kind of space as he transitioned into older babyhood, right, and young toddlerhood.

So I never really put a lot of parameters around his breastfeeding, even now. We don't really have too many, like, I never really said, oh, we're only going to breastfeed in the morning, buddy, or we're only [00:10:00] going to breastfeed at night. I've never even actually night weaned him. He just naturally started sleeping through the night more and more.

He still bed shares with us, which I know was a big question that a lot of you had. He still, we have a king sized bed and a twin that's right beside it, and he sleeps on the twin. And, uh, if he wakes up during the night and needs a breastfeed, and I want to breastfeed him, or he asks for a breastfeed, I should say, and I want to breastfeed him, I will, but it's Pretty rare that that happens.

[00:10:30] And sometimes he's asked to breastfeed and I didn't want to, and so I don't. And it doesn't really result in like a lot of upset or anything typically, but oftentimes if he's asking to do it, it's because he's having a hard time sleeping and it's going to help him to feel comforted and safe and fall back asleep.

So that means when I say no, Even though there's no pushback, he often has a hard time falling asleep, which means I'm often up a lot longer than I wish I was, um, but in the middle of the night, [00:11:00] if I just don't feel like it, I'll just be like, no, buddy, we'll breastfeed in the morning, and, uh, typically that's fine, um, but like I said, sometimes I do end up regretting it because two hours later, he's still not asleep, and I'm like, why did I do that?

If I just breastfed him right away, he probably would have drifted back to sleep. So, yeah, he, we, he still bed shares with us. I never officially night weaned him. I just rolled with the flow, like, on it and it's not, it's not really been a problem for us. He has spent a number of nights apart from me at different [00:11:30] times, sometimes with dad.

Like, with his dad, with my husband, um, I have had a few sleep studies in the last year, right? I've, I've, uh, I don't know if it was last year or the year before. Must have been the year before. I went to, like, I went to a girls night at a cabin with a bunch of friends, um, and then, of course, my husband and I have had a few nights away here and there, the two of us.

And there are plenty of evenings where I am out doing things, and [00:12:00] my husband will put him to sleep, or he is at Grandma and Grandpa's, and he falls asleep there, and then we kind of pick him up and bring him home. So that's never been really an issue. Um, I am going to do more content on having that night away, although I do have a couple podcast episodes on it, but it, I don't really want to go into a lot of detail here, but I just want to say that it's completely possible to have other people put your child to sleep, even when your primary method of supporting them to sleep is breastfeeding.

Again, [00:12:30] I don't want to have to go into all those things right here and now. I'm trying to keep this podcast episode a little bit lighter and relaxed and more of that behind the scenes kind of stuff, less of the science y stuff. Yeah, it's definitely possible and that's been our normal for us. So, right now, he typically breastfeeds when he wakes up first thing in the morning.

Uh, he, the days he does nap, which he still does occasionally, I will breastfeed him to nap if I want to. And then I normally breastfeed him before bed. And then [00:13:00] there's times during the day where he asks to breastfeed and sometimes I'll breastfeed him, but it's not that often. And often when he does ask to breastfeed.

There's a reason, and I can see it. So, sometimes it's like, Oh, dude, I haven't filled your water bottle in hours. You're thirsty, right? And so, he might not necessarily, like, recognize it himself and come up to me like, Mommy, I am thirsty. Please get me some water. But he's just like, Mommy, milk. And so, when he does that, I, uh, sometimes I just say, Oh, you're thirsty, bud.

Let me go get you some water. Now, that is [00:13:30] my knowledge of the fact that, like, he probably needs a lot. more quantity of milk than what he's going to get in that breastfeeding session. Not because I don't have enough milk for him or because I've dried up or anything like that. I just know that his thirst is going to be quenched better with water, so I'll grab him water.

I will absolutely breastfeed him if he's upset, if he's hurt, um, Sometimes he, yeah, just things are going on and he will get really upset about something and he [00:14:00] doesn't necessarily ask to breastfeed. I'll say, hey, do you want some mummy milk, buddy? Or I'll kind of put him in a position where he can breastfeed, never forcing him, of course, or trying to make him do it.

But if he wants it, it's there. And sometimes it's just a few seconds, but it works for us. And when I do those things, it doesn't like, make him want to ask all the time. And I know that's a fear a lot of people have, but it truly doesn't. Because there's other reasons why he's asking. It's not a habit, right?

Um, so, yeah, that's, that's what that looks like for us [00:14:30] on, on a day to day. Now, sometimes he will Ask to breastfeed and then stop and then want to breastfeed again. And again, that's a cue for me that like, Oh, what's happening? Is he relying on breastfeeding right now? Why is he like popping on and off? Uh, and that sometimes will happen around bedtime if he's like overtired or not tired enough.

And I kind of have to look at, look at that and connect with him and see what's up and see if there's something else that he needs. But generally speaking, breastfeeding [00:15:00] is just a time for us to connect, to slow down a little bit, for me to support him, uh, and it works for us. Now, they, like I said with my daughter, the biggest things that we worked on as far as being intentional with was the Like when we breastfed and where we breastfed.

With my son, it's often how he breastfeeds because when he was very young, he started nipple twiddling. I've talked about this on previous episodes for sure. I think episode number two, I have a whole podcast episode on nipple [00:15:30] twiddling. Uh, but that was his thing. My daughter never nipple twiddled, but he did.

So I've definitely worked with him around that because it didn't bother me until it did. And when it did, then I wanted to do something about it. So I've always understood that there's reasons behind these things. And I talk about that on the nipple twiddling episode, but for my son, sometimes it's stimulation of milk flow and I'll allow him to have the other side.[00:16:00] 

Um, we talked a lot. So I first was like, this isn't working for me. It was probably around, like just before he turned two, maybe it was starting to get a little bit. Uncomfortable for me. And it probably had to do with hormones for me, actually, around, like, getting my period and all that kind of stuff.

Um, sometimes it's just more sensitive. It would bother me more. So when he would, I would suggest to him, like, Oh, do you want to try the other side? Okay, you know, like, mommy milk is for your mouth, not for your [00:16:30] fingers. Do you need to drink milk from the other side? And eventually, he started telling me, like, he'd pop off and say, I want the other side.

Or he would take his hand and instead of, like, nipple twiddling, he'd kind of just tug gently on my shirt on the other side while he's still latched. And I would say to him, oh, buddy, does that mean you want some milk on the other side? And he would often nod his head or he'd pop off and say, yes, I mean, we'd switch.

Another thing that I would notice, so sometimes it was that another thing I would notice is often connection. He was feeling a little bit like I was distracted. Maybe I'd kind of been a little [00:17:00] more agitated that day, a little more upset. This has happened a lot in the last year. Um, and he would be fidgety at the breast or want to nipple twiddle or just like not be rested, especially at bedtime.

He would kind of be like all over the place. So that's my cue to pause. Put down my phone if I was on my phone, hold his hand, talk with him sweetly, gently, softly, um, about different things, about things we liked, about things I love about him, and [00:17:30] it would often calm his body. He would get that connection that he needed from me.

He would feel all that warm fuzzies and feel safe and Loved and his body would rest and he would often be able to fall asleep better. He does breastfeed often. We do a story at bedtime and he'll breastfeed while I'm reading the story too, just as a, that thought came to me. Uh, so yeah, for him, it has been the how we're breastfeeding that we've talked on and done a lot of work around.

It's not something [00:18:00] that it's like, oh, you You teach this one day and, like, it's good to go forever. No, like, little kids, especially when they're a little bit stressed, which is often when those behaviors come up, they don't have the capacity to think through those problems themselves. He hasn't had the capacity to think through those things and figure out an alternative and identify what his needs are and all that stuff.

That's on me, right? So, I notice that and then I make those shifts and changes and it works well for us. It has been something [00:18:30] that I've used and continue to use as a tool over the last year, especially when I've had a little bit of a harder time parenting and a little of a harder time being present with my kids and getting my needs met and their needs met.

So I hope that was helpful for you. Um, another question that I got was around boundaries. And I think I spoke to that in this episode too, but typically if my son's needs overall are met, he's not [00:19:00] hungry or thirsty or, you know, like lethargic from not moving enough during the day, uh, or, you know, overtired.

If I really need to say no to a feed for whatever reason, I'm just there with him through whatever feelings might come afterwards. Yeah, but I get it. It's tough. It's hard, but there's not really pushback around breastfeeding ever. There are absolutely other things where he will have a lot of emotions about and feel really Strongly about and it's a lot of compassion and just supporting him [00:19:30] through that.

Hey, dude, I get it. It's hard. Um, and yeah, I have a podcast episode on toddler tantrums and night weaning where I talk about that a bit more. So if you're interested in that, you can definitely go there. But as far as my life and a typical day in my life right now, breastfeeding my four year old, we breastfeed when we wake up in the morning.

Breastfeed sometime around nap time-ish. If, if he's having a nap and breastfeed, be sorry, breastfeed before bed. And [00:20:00] then we breastfeed a few times during the day. If, if it comes up, uh, sometimes I will breastfeed him in public. I breastfeed him around family and a lot of friends actually, if it, it's necessary, uh, like.

You know, if it comes up, if we're at like a restaurant or if we're somewhere like I guess really public and like, like I might not breastfeed him in that moment. Um, I'd probably be looking at other ways of supporting him, but he generally doesn't ask to [00:20:30] breastfeed in those moments either. Yeah, I hope that that was supportive for you.

If you have any other questions, please let me know, and I still use that schedule. We homeschool, so the schedule, visual schedule every day helps us a lot and helps my kids to transition between tasks, which, or between times of day, which is often when there's upset because kids can really only focus and keep track of like one thing at a time.

It takes their brains a little longer [00:21:00] to focus Switch tasks. And that can be a time when there can be a lot of upset and dysregulation that can result in breastfeeding and has in the past, right? Like either them asking to breastfeed or me choosing to breastfeed just to support them through that transition.

But I do find that that planner helps a ton. And if you would like it, you can grab it at ownyourparentingstory. com forward slash planner or at the link in the show notes. Next week, I will be on sharing more behind the scenes kind of stuff. Stuff about my life and my breastfeeding experience, [00:21:30] and I'm really excited to share this with all of you.

If you would like to let me know what exactly you wanna hear, please do that. Just shoot me a DMM over on Instagram at own dot your parenting dot story, or you can send me an email, Jenna at own your parenting story.com. I'll talk to y'all next week.