I'm feeding DD to sleep right now

DS fed to sleep until he was almost three, and like you, it was rarely ten sucks and out. Just over three hours was our record. DS has some serious sleep issues though (he is autistic) and I have since found research which found that oxytocin is beneficial in autism so instinctively I was doing the right thing for him.

There were times when I truly loved the unique bond we had and the utter loveliness of a sleepily feeding toddler, and others when I found myself resenting it. It was certainly taxing on the nights when he would take hours, and physically exhausting too. Because he has other sensitivities (auditory and visual) I could sit in a darkened room with a computer on, but the screen had to be dim, the sound of keystrokes was too distracting - I could only use a mouse, and I could look only at static pages with no rapid contrast changes or moving graphics. He would need to be put into bed still attached, otherwise he would stir and cry out for more. And he often woke several times a night and needed to be fed back to sleep. We weaned six weeks after DD was born, it was becoming untenable to care for a toddler with such demanding feeding/sleeping requirements and a newborn who had needs of her own, especially as DS was not able to understand why I would have to feed DD when it was sleep time for him and became super distressed (we tried literal tandem feeding but it was physically impossible for me to put a sleeping toddler into bed one handed with a newborn on the other breast. An extra arm and I may have managed it LOL).

And we pretty much went cold turkey one day, I decided that the benefit for him was being far outweighed by the distress it was causing him and we just stopped. Just like that. The first two days were pretty intense, but after that he accepted it surprisingly quickly and was not upset at all when he was denied a feed. It took nearly four weeks for him to stop asking completely though, and he still very occasionally asks if he is sick or really upset. When he had his tonsils out he was really distraught at one point and asked for a feed (which I did not deny), and just put his mouth over my breast without actually sucking. Like a literal comfort feed.

As wonderful as it can be, it can also be pretty full on sometimes though, can't it?