Thanks to Dany for her story:

Here’s my experience of tandem nursing. During pregnancy I had reduced the number of feeds to one, before bedtime. Because my toddler was over 2 ½ years old when her baby sister was born, and because she coped well with ‘only’ one feed a day, I decided to stick to that for her. If she had been younger I think I would have given her more feeds. Night nursing two children didn’t seem too appealing to me, so it was right for us to continue like this.

The first time I fed our toddler after the birth, it felt very strange. Almost like I was cheating on my brand new baby. Her big mouth and strong way of sucking was so different to my new baby’s soft little toothless mouth. But at the same time I was happy that I could still give my toddler that little bit of security in a time of great adjustment for her. She wasn’t the youngest anymore. Some people wonder if having to share the boobies might make the older child more jealous and resentful of their new sibling, but in my experience it actually helped the bonding. I had explained to her that her baby sister had no teeth and could only have mammy’s boobies. She didn’t mind at all that baby was having so many feeds.

The first time I fed them at the same time it was a bit of a struggle to get them both latched on. First I would latch on the baby in the rugby hold, because that was the best way she could maintain her grip of my nipple in those early days. Also that way she was safe from my wild toddler’s moving limbs. Then I would let my toddler latch herself on. But I couldn’t support her very well in this way and the result was that she was ‘hanging’ on my breast and her upper teeth were digging into my nipple. She started doing this too when I fed her on her own. I started to feel irritated when she was drinking. As soon as she was latched on, I was thinking ‘I wish you were finished’. Then when she would fall asleep I would look at her innocent little face and feel guilty for those irritated feelings and thoughts. Also I wanted to help her through the winter with my antibodies, and then consider stopping after her third birthday in the spring. I had a book called ‘adventures in tandem nursing’ and read that lots of tandem nursing mothers can have the feelings I had, so that helped.

As the weeks passed, and I got more practise, feeding the toddler together with the baby became easier again. I paid more attention to her latch and to how I supported her head, so she stopped ‘hanging’ and biting. I could have decided to only feed them one by one, especially since the toddler was only feeding once a day, but that was at bedtime and my baby happens to be a clusterfeeder, and wanted to be on the breast at that time. Changing the time of that feed wasn’t an option, because my toddler needed it to calm down and settle for her sleep. She used to fall asleep on the breast, but learned to have a short feed and then lie down beside me to fall asleep.

I am now three months into tandem nursing and she is still latching on before bed, but doesn’t really get any milk anymore. She’ll suck for a short while and let go before the letdown reflex. I introduced counting to ten to shorten the feeds. I would say ‘I’m going to count to ten and then you are finished’. Only after three days she started letting go before I even started counting, and say ‘Finished! And you didn’t even count yet!’ It made her feel in control and proud.

Now it looks like she is going to be finished by her third birthday which is a few weeks away. Although I guided her a little bit in weaning, she has done the weaning for the most part in her own time. My experience of tandem nursing has been very special, even though I didn’t particularly found it easy I would do it again if I will be given the chance. I didn’t pressure my toddler to wean and I made the adjustment to having a new sibling a lot smoother for her. I also gave her the very best of nourishment and protection for three years. And it was very beautiful to see how my toddler would gently caress her sister’s little head while they were feeding simultaneously, or how my baby would grab the hand of her older sister.