10 month old - want to reduce breastfeeding - how?

[MoominaMama]

My DS is 10 months old and until 1 week ago was EBF (apart from addition of solid food from 6 months+).

I now want to reduce breastfeeding to hopefully morning and evening only.

At the moment he has:
6am ish: Wake up and bf
7am: breakfast
1030/11ish: bf after nap
12ish: lunch
230/3ish: bf after nap
6ish: bedtime bf

Overnight .... who knows, every night is different but I feed him back to sleep everytime he wakes. He had 2 weeks of only waking once a night about a month ago ... but now is back to more often (although he is teething so this is also expected).

Last week I replaced the afternooon feed with a cup of ready made formula. He drank the whole 200mls every day no problem and I have had no issues (I had mastitus 5 times in the early days so keen to avoid issues).

Last night he slept amazingly from 615pm until 4am, had a quick feed and back to sleep until 6am. Best night we have ever had!

Today I have started replacing the mid morning feed with the same. He drank about 90mls in the mid morning feed and about 160ml in the afternoon feed. I will continue this for another few weeks to see how we go and how it affects our nights. So ... questions ...

1. Am I going about this in the right way?
   
   
2. At what point would I look at replacing the mid morning and afternoon feeds with a snack instead?
   
   
3. What do you think to the timings of things? He really is taking very little at his bedtime breastfeed and this of course wont be helping his disrupted nights.
   
   
4. Do yiu think my plan to keep breastfeeding just twice a day is realistic? I gave up pumping long ago as never really got anything and I have always felt the milk I have has been 'just enough' if you see what I mean. I dont think I have the best supply due to lots of feeding issues at the start. I would love to carry on some breastfeeding but at the same time if this plan meant that my supply dwindled then I would accept that it is the end for us.
   
   I am quite happy with the 6am-6pm day at the moment but would need this to be more like 6am-7pm when I go back to work.
   
   Does anyone have any experience of the above?

[llammallamamissesmama]

Sounds like you've got it right. Very similar to what I did. I swapped a feed to sippy cup every few days so I dropped afternoon feed, then mid morning feed, then early morning feed then bedtime feed, then...eek, night feeds. I actually swapped night breast feeds for offering water. He was absolutely fine. The whole process was a lot less daunting than I imagined it to be. He wasn't at the grabby/pulling top stage so I'm glad I stopped at 10 months.

Good luck.

[bronya]

Yep just replace bf with formula/food. Worked well for me!