I remember going through these feelings when I was still feeding Flopsy, and I’m going through them again now.  Breastfeeding Mopsy is irritating me a lot at the moment, both physically and emotionally.  I am so tired of hearing her going “yakyak” (her word for breastfeeding - don’t ask how she thought of it!) all day long (and even in her sleep!) and I would dearly love to be not breastfeeding her right now.  But do I want her to wean?  No, I don’t think I do, as she clearly still needs it.  It’s also the quickest way to help her through any meltdowns, hurts, bad dreams etc. etc.  I do love breastfeeding her when she’s sleeping - for some reason it’s not half so irritating physically, and it’s warm, dark and cosy and very, very special.  In the day time it’s a completely different story, though.  She gets very upset when I refuse, although occasionally she’s happy to have her feeds limited to just a few seconds.  I just need to let off steam about how maddening it is right now.  I just want to feed Cotton-tail, and I guess that’s my instincts kicking in - I need to protect my newborn!  I know I felt like this with Flopsy, and I also know that I got through it.  However, I continued to experience more and more episodes where I found breastfeeding her annoying, right up until she weaned - I thought of it in the end as the beginning of a two-way weaning process ie. we both started the nursing relationship together, and we both ended it together.  I guess, thinking about how nature works, if mothers adored breastfeeding the whole time, there would be little or no incentive for them to help their little ones to wean - it’s probably no coincidence that it commonly becomes irritating for mothers to breastfeed at approximately the same time as toddlers start to become ready to break away from that part of their babyhood.  Sometimes Mopsy gets over her distress at not being allowed to feed very quickly, at other times she really does get beside herself.  I could really do with devising a strategy to deal with this.  When I weaned Flopsy, I always fed her if she got beside herself with distress at not being allowed to feed, but it rarely happened so I assumed from this that she was probably emotionally able to deal with weaning.  Maybe the fact that Mopsy only sometimes gets this distressed suggests that she’s near that point herself…?  Maybe just that thought might keep me going…?  The situation’s not helped by the knowledge that having a new baby sister is going to make Mopsy’s need for breastfeeding much greater - she needs to know she’s still my baby - so I don’t want to actually wean her completely yet.  Tandem nursing can be a wonderful thing, but it can be the total opposite at times as well!  However, I guess if I weren’t still feeding Mopsy, she’d be doing other things that may make my life difficult - at least breastfeeding is a pretty easy thing to do, as long as I can get over the irritation of it!  Much easier than dealing with meltdowns or other challenging toddler behaviour like hitting/biting etc.!