Surprise!

Warning: This is going to be a long post related to parenting and breastfeeding. If you don't care about these topics, feel free to just peruse the photos interjected here and there just to mix it up.

Jacob went camping this weekend with the 12 year old scouts in our ward. He was in charge of making dinner for the leaders Friday night and decided to make a stir fry. While we were buying stuff for it I told him he should grab a box of fortune cookies just for fun. So he did. And then he gave me a cookie before he left and this was my fortune. It could not have been more true!

Jacob was gone Friday night and wasn't scheduled to get home until late Saturday night, missing Issac's bedtime twice. Now, some of you may think it's silly but Jacob and I are both involved in Isaac's bedtime routine. But I didn't really think it would impact Isaac too much to have his daddy gone two nights in a row. And maybe it wasn't because Jacob was gone but Isaac certainly was behaving differently. Friday night he refused to nurse. I had been working on weaning Isaac and was down to just his bedtime feeding remaining. I was planning on cutting it out sometime this coming week. But surprise! Isaac decided to totally wean himself. He was mostly fine Friday night and drank some formula from his sippy cup after I gave up trying to breastfeed. And then he proceeded to cry himself to sleep. He has been going to sleep pretty calmly lately so this was abnormal. And I didn't love it.

Saturday night was the same, drank his formula and then went to bed crying. So I was figuring we'd have a few rough nights of crying and then he'd get back to his normal falling asleep with limited issues. After tonight I'm not so certain.

With his daddy back in the picture we proceeded to do our normal routine. When it came time to eat Isaac drank a few ounces of formula from his cup and then started screaming. I gave him to Jacob to see if that would help him drink it, but no. It was awful. So I tried just putting him in his crib and he screamed even worse. And of course, he learned the sign for milk in association with nursing just before I decided to start weaning. So all the while he is throwing his fit he is indicating he wants to nurse. Sad. :(

I was at a loss. Jacob tried switching the formula to the bottle instead of the sippy cup but that didn't do too much. So I took Isaac again and sat down in the "media room" with him. He stopped screaming and played around with the bottle a bit. Then Jacob brought in a little more formula in Isaac's sippy cup since he was just playing with the bottle. He started crying again when he saw the cup. Again, I was at a loss. So we said a quick prayer that Isaac would drink his cup and go to bed. He then drank the formula and went to bed. It was a small miracle for us. But now I am concerned. His reaction to weaning now that is dad is back is not good. Any advice would be awesome!

Because seeing this cute little face totally distressed breaks my heart.