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I tried to wean Ila this week from nursing and I failed miserably.  I have been offering her sippy cups with every meal for over a month and she refuses to even try them.  I’ve tried a variety of different kinds of cups with a variety of different contents (milk, formula, mother’s milk, water).

My Doctor suggested going cold turkey and just stop allowing her to nurse and he said she’d get thirsty enough to try some milk.  I wanted to pick a day where I could stay home all day so I started Thursday a little before noon.  I would have started earlier in the day, but people were going to come and help me pack and I thought I couldn’t deal well with both.  We both survived the rest of Thursday ok.  Ila didn’t even take a sip of milk, but she didn’t cry too long at the times I knew she just wanted to nurse.  After putting her to bed, I expressed some milk to give her in the morning.

Friday morning was a different story.  She woke up at 4:30 AM and I brought her into the living room, but when I offered her a sippy cup instead of the option to nurse, she started to scream.  She screamed and screamed.  I tried to give her some solid food and she refused to even take a bite.  I made the sippy cup pour some milk into her mouth and she swallowed as she cried and continued to cry and push the cup away.  By 7:30 AM she hadn’t taken a single sip and she was absolutely miserable.  She was even starting to look dehydrated.  She had no more tears, although she continued to scream and her mouth seemed dry.  At this point I was imagining myself taking a severely dehydrated baby girl into the hospital to be re-hydrated and explaining how I was just tired of nursing.  I wasn’t really trying to ween her because of being tired of nursing, but I felt like my reasons seemed rather selfish.  Anyway, I threw in the towel and nursed her.  I have given up trying to get her to drink from a cup, although I will still put one on her tray with every meal, just in case.