Weaning your baby is part of the natural breastfeeding experience. It doesn't have to be a time of unhappiness for you or your baby. If done gradually, and with love, weaning can be a positive experience for both you and your little one.

How to Wean
Ideally, your baby will nurse until he outgrows the need. This is called natural, or baby-led weaning. Just as you would not set an arbitrary limit on other areas of your baby's development, such as deciding exactly when he will sit up, roll over, move into a bed instead of a crib, etc. (instead, you watch for signs that he is ready to move on to the next developmental stage), it just makes sense not to set an arbitrary time limit on how long you will nurse your baby.

You actually begin weaning your baby the very first time you offer him any food other than your milk. Weaning should be a process, rather than an event. Depending on how you go about it, weaning can be abrupt or gradual, and may take days, weeks or months.

Abrupt weaning should always be avoided, if at all possible, for the sake of both you and your baby. If you suddenly stop nursing, your breasts will respond by becoming engorged, and you may develop a breast infection or breast abscess. Your hormone levels drop abruptly, and depression can result. Mothers with a history of depression should especially consider this when making decisions about weaning.

Abruptly withdrawing the breast can cause emotional trauma in the baby. Since nursing is not only a source of food for a baby, but a source of security and emotional comfort as well, taking it away abruptly can be very disturbing. Weaning gradually lets you slowly substitute others kinds of attention to help compensate for the loss of the closeness of nursing.

If you are told to wean your baby abruptly for medical reasons, you need to make sure that there are no other options. It is well worth getting a second opinion from someone who is knowledgeable about breastfeeding. Most of the time, you'll find that there are alternatives. (See article on Drugs and Breastfeeding for more information.) For example, if you are prescribed a medication that is incompatible with breastfeeding, ask your doctor to see if another, safer drug can be substituted.

Even if you do have to take a drug that isn't safe while nursing, you have the option of just weaning temporarily and picking up breastfeeding where you left off. This involves expressing your milk during the interim, so that you will ready to resume nursing, and also to avoid engorgement. A hospital-grade electric pump is better for this purpose than a manual or small electric pump.

Benefits of Extended Breastfeeding
There are many, many benefits to extended breastfeeding, and very few benefits to weaning early. That is not to say that even one feeding at the breast doesn't have value, because it does. Whether you nurse for days, weeks or years, breastfeeding provides both you and your baby with many important benefits - but breastfeeding for a year or longer offers the most advantages. Extended breastfeeding is definitely not the norm in this country - in the US, fewer than 20 percent of babies are still nursing when they are six months old. While you may find it hard to imagine a mother in India nursing a three year old, that same mother would probably be baffled at the idea of taking a baby off the breast when he was just a few weeks old.

If you decide to go with natural weaning, be prepared for lots of unsolicited advice. You will be told that you're doing it for you, not the baby (this is ridiculous, because it is a proven fact that you absolutely cannot make a baby nurse if he doesn't want to). You will be told that your child will become a sexual deviant (yep, I bet if you took a survey you'd find that prisons are just chock full of men who were breastfed till they were ready to wean - sure.). You will be told that your child will become hopelessly dependent on you, and you'll be following him to kindergarten to nurse at rest time (interestingly enough, experience and research have shown that babies who are nursed until they are ready to wean are actually less dependent because their security needs have been met as infants). It really boils down to following your instincts as a mother - nobody knows this little individual better than you, and you will know when he is ready to wean.