Want to get pregnant again...

[kclel]

Hi I'm trying to ween my baby boy (13 months old) because I want to get pregnant again. I'm not ovulating, guess I'm a lucky one that won't until I completely stop.

My nipples are very tender. I'm wondering why this is? Is it because he has teeth? He doesn't bite...

[kohlby]

Unless you're barely nursing, there's no way to know that you won't ovulate until you completely stop. It's VERY rare that you'll have to completely stop. It can take 3 months to notice a change though, so I'd suggest cutting back very slowly and then giving it some time to see if there's some effect. The average age for the first post partum period for those who follow ecological nursing is 14.6 months - and those aren't babies who are cut down even!

I did have to cut my son down in order to get my fertility back. My daughter naturally cut herself down enough. I got my first PPAF when my son was 18 months, but my LP was too short until he was 20 months old. With DD, the first PPAF was 16 months, but LP was too short until 18 months. I have heard of many women getting pg without a period inbetween though so it's definately possible to get full fertility back right away without that lag of time I had!

He could be changing his latch to make your nipples more tender. Sometimes toddler do this due to teething or illness. Sometimes it's due to your period about to start since the milk supply can dip then. And sometimes there's no reason we can pinpoint! I'd suggest unlatching him and make him latch back.

[kclel]

Thank you so much for your reply. I really appreciate it. I want desperately to get pregnant. My son is 13 months old and is only nursing 3 to 4 times a day. Before bed, once at night, and once in the morning. I started using an OPK and recently started taking 100mg of B6 (read that on this site...). But I guess the whole night nursing is what's holding back my ovulating???

[kohlby]

Maybe. My DD actually only nurses at night. If you can get a long block without nursing, it can help. For many, that is at night. But for my DD, that's day time. If you really want to cut him down, maybe set it at 3 nursings. Or shorten a couple of the sessions. Cut out or shorten where it's the easiest first and then hope that's enough!

I was down to nursing twice a day when I got my period back with my son. It was 3-4 times for my daughter at night, however, her nursing sessions were MUCH shorter than my sons ever were. It's impossible to know where the threashold might ahead of time.

I found opk's pretty useless before my period returned since I'd have to use them way too often. Instead, I used a saliva microscope. If that showed possibly fertility, then I used the opk. Cervical mucous is another good way to detect it - but you can have seemingly non-fertile cervical mucous and actually be fertile at that point. But it still can't hurt to monitor along with other methods.