Phasing out breastfeeding....(sniff, sniff)

[voyageofdiscovery]

My DD is 9 months and EBF. I do express every morning but only to use in her porridge and for the occasional nights out (she won?t take a bottle of expressed milk from me ? she did used to, but decided she liked breast best!)

I am returning to work in 3 months and whilst I am really (really) sad to even think about stopping breastfeeding I know that realistically I will have to stop by the time she is 12 months old. I?m looking for some advice on the best way to go about phasing out breastfeeding in a way which isn?t traumatic for DD or me!

Currently she has a morning feed when she gets up (8am-ish), a mid-morning feed (10am-ish), mid-afternoon feed (3:30pm-ish), bedtime feed (6:45pm-ish) and a dream feed (11pm-ish). She usually falls asleep after her mid-morning and mid-afternoon feed (I?m a bit concerned that stopping these feeds will result in a lack of naps!). She eats 3 good meals a day and has water in a sippy cup with her lunch. She also has a mid afternoon snack, but will still have a feed after this. She will have a good amount of milk at all her feeds.

So how should I go about dropping feeds? Should I stop them completely or replace them with milk (either expressed or formula) in a sippy cup? And how should I do this? I know DD will not be happy with a sippy cup in place of a breastfeed! It seems sensible that the mid-morning and mid-afternoon feeds will be the first to go ? is this right?

DD will be starting nursery at 12 months and I don?t want to suddenly stopped BF at this time as I think it might be too much change for her. So I?m conscious that I should probably start phasing BF out now.

Any words of wisdom welcome. (My HV basically told me that she couldn?t advise me on this ? helpful!)

Also I feel teary just thinking about not feeding her ? like she won?t be my little baby anymore and won?t need me anymore ? does this feeling go away?!

I have got my ds, 9 months, down to 3 feeds a day as I expect to go back to work soon. Spoke to a bf counsellor who advised to take him out in the pram or in the car when I usually did the morning feed - anything not feeding that gets him to sleep, so that he has his nap without a breast feed. So usually, small snack and water then long walk in the pram.

Has been successful in that he doesn't ask for a feed - he wasn't often asking for it anyway which is why I chose to drop that one. But he doesn't always nap, even after an hour in the pram! He still feeds to sleep in the afternoon and at night. I have left him with my Mum for nearly a full day while I went to an interview and he did sleep morning and afternoon then. He seems to forget he wants feeding when I am not there.

I was in the same position as you, OP. Two months before going back to work, I dropped the mid=morning feed, and gave DD a bottle of formula instead. She took to it fine, although made a lot of mess dribbling etc at first! Two weeks later I dropped the mid-afternoon feed. In terms of naps I found I was able to soothe her to sleep by cuddling and then putting her down dozy but awake - it wasn't as hard as I'd feared and on the days it didn't work I pushed her round the park till she nodded off.

I continued the morning and bedtime feeds for a while but in the end I decided to drop the bedtime feed as I wanted my DH to be able to put her to bed without the breast/sleep association. Physically I found I wasn't producing enough to sustain one feed a day - it just wasn't really working for me, although perhaps I didn't stick with it long enough - so I eventually switched the morning feed to a bottle too.

I was very sad to give up, and thought about it this way and that in my head, and did some crying along the way, but for me I think I eventually made the right decision, and DD had nearly eleven months of EBF and then mixed-feeding. It is sad, it's a loss that needs a little bit of grieving, but your baby will still need you for cuddles and love just as much as before. The bond won't go away.

Thank you FuriousRox vj32 and yesmy - really helpful