How much longer?!

[JacqueslePeacock]

I've been feeding DS for 2 yrs 7 months, and I would quite like to stop. Sadly DS gives no sign at all of wanting to stop, and frequently tells me "No, I'm only a little baby" if I suggest he is getting quite grown up for BFing. We're down to one BF a day, just before bed, but I can't see any hope that he is ever going to want to quit.

Is there any way I can encourage him gently to give up? Did anyone find their DC weaned naturally by around 3? I like the idea of self-weaning but I really don't fancy going on until he's 4 or so.

DS1 self weaned before he was 3, though I was pregnant at the time. That might be a rather drastic step to take. :)

Maybe try having someone else do bedtime at least a couple of times a week, so he gets used to a no-boob bedtime. Also (admittedly with my milk supply tanking from pregnancy) DS1 was very amenable to the line that he was "a big boy now and had drunk all the milk".

Oh dear, I was dreading someone saying "get pregnant"!

He will tolerate DH doing bedtime at least once a week, but not if I'm in the house. I get agonised wails of "Mummy milk! Mummy miiiiiiilk!" I can hang in there a bit longer, but it would be good to have an end in sight, if that makes sense.

Dd self weaned at 3 almost to the day. Shocked me as she was the same as yours. It will happen and I am glad I let her decide when

I started to talk about mummy running out of milk as she started to say not much was coming anymore, I said as you get older you need less milk and mummy's boobies don't make as much... Tis may have got her thinking, can you talk to him about the milk and ask him if there is as much, which side has more,...

Thanks, that is a good idea. Were there any signs she was going to wean? Or did she just say "no thank you" one day?

Not sure really, she just started to realise she was too big. Once she had it in her head that I wasn't making enough milk for her, she started to think of herself as a big girl, which in turn led her to say 'I'm not a baby any more mummy!'

It was very sudden though, and shocked me as I didn't think it would happen any time soon, and was fully expecting to be feeding her now.

She went very suddenly from 2 feeds a day to nothing. Once she had missed a couple of days, she did try it again, and laughed as she felt silly and said my booby was empty.

If you want to encourage it gently, I would say to start talking about the milk running out soon as he is older, distracting during feeds so he gets less and your body makes less, and having lots of chats about it to get the idea of an end to it into his head.

The end result would hopefully be for him to feel like be chosen to stop but it had in fact been heavily engineered by you!

That's exactly the end result I am aiming for, yes! Thank you. And your approach sounds like a good one.

My only concern is that, because we BF as part of bedtime routine, I can't quite see what to replace it with or how to do it without him becoming upset. He doesn't usually feed to sleep, but almost does. That's partly why I can't see him volunteering to stop. I will start the talking about milk running out though - that's a good idea - and see what happens.

I fed my DS until his third birthday - I reminded him several times in the weeks preceding his birthday that we would stop feeding at bedtime (like you, his only feed).

On the day itself, he did get very upset and cried, but literally only on that day. The next day, he was absolutely fine.

just FYI

I weaned DS at around 2yo. Because he was drinking from a cup, when he asked for milk I offered him a cup of cow's milk and made that the only option. He generally turned that down without much fuss and went to bed. After that DH put him to bed so milk didn't really occur to him.

I realise we probably had an easy ride but that's what worked for us.

Good luck