The nursing timer can be adversely affected by a number of things. The most common of them is pausing the game a lot, such as many people do to help them get multiple kids on collectibles. That can prevent the nursing timer from counting down correctly, since it doesn't operate on 1-minute increments like the fire and the trees do. Depending upon game speed, the timer is updated anywhere from every 3 minutes to every 12 minutes. Frequent pausing can have a dramatic effect on nursing moms.

As long as the timers are counting down, the moms will eventually wean their babies. Adjusting the computer's system clock (either intentionally or by the operating system's automatic adjustments) will cause the timer not to count down at all until the game and system clock are back in sync.