Don't know how to stop breastfeeding

[ThiefOnMyIsland]

DS is almost 15 months old and still breastfeeding. I fed him exclusively until 9 1/2 months, with him having a bottle of formula once in a blue moon after then but still bf a lot too. 3 weeks before his 1st birthday I got a full time job with a 60 mile round commute. DS had some formula in the day but still bf morning and night. When he hit 13 months we tried him with cows Milk, which he refuses to drink (though he will have it on cereal), and he went off formula also.

During this time he has been have two bf before bed and then feeding frequently in the night and then a feed when he gets up of a morning. At the weekend he has bf throughout the day on top of this. I'm at breaking point with this now as I want to stop bf but 1) I don't know how and 2) I feel guilty. DS quite obviously still wants to bf. I've tried all the tricks of just using water in the night to try and help wean him, but 9 times out of 10 he will scream until he has a bf before going back to sleep. When i try to refuse him a feed he pulls at my top. I've never gone through having to wean off the breast before, as I couldn't bf DC1 and DC2 for different reasons, so I'm not sure how to do it as DS just associates me with milk.

I'm absolutely drained and exhausted from being frequently woken in the night and the commute, people comment on how tired I look at work. I know it sounds selfish, but I've had enough now and I just want my body back (some sleep would be nice too!). Any advice really would be appreciated.

Would night weaning to start with help? You then can think about whether you want to keep up any day feeds once you've had some sleep.

I found doing roughly Dr Jay Gordon's approach worked well with DS1, it did involve a bit of daddy settling and some squawking but within a couple of weeks he just wasn't waking up for milk any more. I ended up keeping the day feeds for quite a while after that because the unbroken nights made such a difference:
drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

Can you talk to him about it? I mean, is he old enough to understand that you are going to stop bfing him? Can you explain to him he's a big boy now and it's not going to happen?

I am quite harsh, I would just go cold turkey and let him yell for a few nights with dad sorting him out tbh. But I stopped bfing at 9mo and 5mo respectively as i really did hate it, and I didn't feel any guilt (probably too tired?!). I completely understand wanting your body back and some unbroken sleep, getting to 15mo is bloody amazing IMO

Thank you both for your advice.

That approach by Dr Jay looks good. Any way we do this we will get resistance from DS, so I'm thinking of trying this in Whit week, as I've booked it off work and DH should have too. I'm not too sure whether DS will understand, but I'll talk to him about what we're doing and why. He's ill at the moment so I don't want to start it right now. I'm just looking forward to getting some sleep again eventually.

I really do feel your pain. My dd is a bit older, 23 months now, but I night weaned her a month ago after absolutely dreading it for months and being certain she wouldn't do it.
I tried my own adapted version of the Jay Gordon method and it worked for us. She just stopped waking at all within the week. We had a few tricky nights but it was not nearly as bad as I thought.
I don't know how good his understanding is, but I got a book from amazon called something like 'Nursies only when the sun shines', which obv sounds crazy, but it's basically a short illustrated book about sleeping all night and having a feed when you wake up. I substituted the word dd uses for 'nursies' and she loved having it read to her from around 12 months - see, I have been trying to give up for quite some time......... We are now on wake up and bed time feeds only and I'm much happier with it all. It's three weeks until she's two and I'm planning to drop the morning one first, then the bedtime one. I really think talking to her about it a lot has helped. Very best of luck xx

I nursed DS until 27 months. He had dropped all of his daytime feeds except before his nap, but then he dropped that just before he turned too. Like you OP, I decided I'd had enough of disturbed sleep. During the night I told him that boobies were sleeping too. We only had two nights of protest, but for 5 or 10 minutes tops. I then told him that he was a big boy and didn't need booby to go to sleep. He simply rolled over and nodded off!

I was gobsmacked. I thought he would be feeding forever and would struggle to wean. He now sleeps 11 hours straight :)

Oh and I wore a high neck top each night for a week just so that she wouldn't be access my boobs..... I have a friend who wore a swimming costume for the same reason!