The Whelp

This is what Matt lovingly calls Julia. Think he said it means a puppy that isn't weaned yet. Anyway, here we are with Julia at nearly 1 year old and I haven't cut her off yet or even started! With the boys, I started weaning them around 11 months so I'd be totally done by a year but this time around I'm just not in a rush. I have a lot of reasons to keep nursing...

-Julia doesn't suck her thumb or a paci so I kinda feel like she's more attached to nursing for comfort reasons.

-"It ain't broke" so I don't really want to fix it...I feed her before and after every time she goes to sleep and it just suits her. It makes her sleepy when it's time to sleep and makes her in a good mood when she wakes up. I don't know how she'd be if I took that away.

-I didn't have a lot of the issues that I had with nursing Joshua and Gray so I haven't gotten as sick of it.

-It's my weight management plan! I need to burn those extra calories through the holidays and I'm not looking forward to the probable weight gain that follows the weaning.

-Julia just seems to young to already be done nursing. That's just my perception I know, but it makes a difference in my decision.

-Julia's little for her age so she can use all the calories she can get.

And my only reasons for stopping are that 1) It's time consuming. When Matt's not around for bedtime, it's not too convenient to sit and quietly feed Julia for 20 minutes or more while the boys go crazy in another part of the house. 2) It feels a little freeing to be done, as I know from my experience with the boys. But for now, I'm not ready to move on so our little whelp will just remain so a little longer.