17 months of breastfeeding: need encouragement!
I'm looking for some words of encouragement or comments from anyone who relates. I'm still breastfeeding my 17-month old about 3 times a day (at minimum, breastfeeding once and pumping twice when in the office) at wake up, pre-nap, and bedtime. She eats well but she and I both love it. I'll most likely be starting the weaning transition in the next few months as she'll be starting daycare when she turns 2. Even though I've been breastfeeding for quite some time and I really don't know how much milk my body is actually producing, I still feel constantly worn out. Even if I get a good 7-8 hours of sleep, I'm exhausted all the time. Work takes twice the effort and it feels like my brain is in 0.5x mode. My body hurts and aches and extra weight is stubborn even though I try to eat well and do low impact cardio, yoga, and pilates. My mental health is low-grade struggling (I'm regularly communicating with my partner, therapist, and doctor about this so please don't worry about this - at this point it feels like a combination of hormones and having a hard time with working full-time + everything else I just listed above).
Is anyone else going through this? Can anyone on the other side help me out to evaluate whether this is normal? Am I simply a victim of my hormones at this point?
Posted Sep 3, 2025, 6:29 PM UTC