That’s how I woke up the morning after the first weaning night. Just by applying pressure, without moving the hand, the milk flowed for a couple of minutes.

We had been breastfeeding on demand for more than a year, and I felt it was my time to wean at night and stop breastfeeding. Gael used to wake up every hour or two and was worth nothing but my breast to go back to sleep. My partner and I began to test everything: the father method didn’t work and it was impossible to give him bottles because he didn’t want any milk except mine. We tried a progressive weaning, and we didn’t see any progress. We started with little lies: Mom is at work, Mom isn’t there, Mom is asleep. There was no way.

At 17 and a half months, a little desperate, we decided to wean suddenly, and I promised myself not to go back, even though my heart was broken knowing that there would be nights of desperate crying. The first day I breastfed Gael with the light on, I explained very affectionately that the breasts were tired and he would not be able to breastfeed until the next morning. We told him to give the breast a kiss and say goodbye. Gael helped me put some band-aid on my nipples to make us both realize the idea. We turned off the light and I tried to put him to sleep in my arms, hoping for the worst. To our surprise, he didn’t cry or ask for a breast at that moment or any of the times he woke up during the night. We’ve been weaning for 6 days now, and Gael sleeps more and more hours in a row, and without saying anything he says goodbye to his breast when he finishes breastfeeding and looks for a band-aid to put on. He has given us an enormous lesson, even though he is not even 18 months old.