Giving up b/feeding with a breastmilk-a-holic one year old!

[Amee]

My one year old dd has always been b/fed and is very reluctant to give it up. I feed her about 4 times during the day as well as morning and night. I would like to stop b/feeding altogether. Dd drinks cows milk but only about 2oz of from a beaker but no more and only when the mood takes her. If she is hungry she will only want b/milk! She has always in the past refused the bottle/formula. She also only goes to sleep on a feed.
I would like some advice on how to give up b/feeding a reluctant baby and also would like to hear from those whose babies gave up b/feeding by themselves as I am wondering that if I carry on b/feeding will there ever be a time when dd says no more please?
PS DD is not a good eater hence the number of feeds.

Amee - afraid I can't give you much advice re: giving up b/f a reluctant feeder, as my dd has pretty much managed it herself (see thread 'time to stop?' Around ten months she reduced to two feeds per day, morning and night - both long feeds. I think she began to believe there was too much going on in the day to distract her - if she fed she may miss out on something! I thought I would quite happily continue morning and night feeds for as long as she wanted, but around 13 months she began to refuse the breast at night too. Basically it coincided with becoming more active in the day (crawling full pelt/trying to walk etc), so by bedtime she was exhausted. She didn't want to feed, just snuggle down ready for bed. I battled on for a couple of weeks, but each time she'd start crying and thrashing around, so I finally listened to what she was trying to tell me! At fourteen months she is now on just the morning feed, and it depends how she feels as to whether that is a long or short affair - I can see it won't go on much longer. she won't drink cows milk in a beaker (not even 2 oz!), and has never taken a bottle. Therefore I concentrate on making up solid meals with milk as an ingredient, and giving yoghurts, cheese etc. I also give her that danone activ water with added calcium - she'd have to drink about a litre to get the same amount as in a glass of water, but at least it's something!
Just out of interest Amee, why do you want to give up? If it's mothing really pressing, I would carry on for a bit longer - these things have a habit of sorting themselves out. Good luck.

P.S. Don't quite know how I managed that smiley face - I'm not that clever!

Amee, I recently went through this myself. My one year old had always been breastfed and refused all bottles - formula, breast milk, cows milk, water! I wanted to be able to leave him for a day or even a night and had three weeks to get him sorted out, another motivation was that he had started to chafe my nipples wth his new sharp teeth and it was becoming really painful to feed. I just woke up one morning, knowing that I felt strong enough to handle saying no and on the first day I cut out all three daytime feeds, so he just had breast first thing and then during the night, but crucially, not at nap times or bed times. It was pretty tough to start with but after three days he got the message. Then when we had got them sorted out i dropped the feeds in the middle of the night, so he was only having one at about 5am. I offered him water in a beaker and milk (which he always declined - the milk that is) and he seems happy with it.
To compensate for the lack of dairy, I have been giving him yoghurt mid morning or cream cheese sarnies, ditto mid afternoon. In the last few days I have been giving him a beaker of milk after bath time when his big sister has hers and he has been drinking a little, 1-2 oz, so progress!

On the down side.........I think I did it too quickly, but I knew I had to go cold turkey because if he thought he could get milk from me sometimes and not others it would have been harder to say no. I had two or three days of hormonal hell, felt SUPER cross/weepy/tetchy etc, We have also started to have problems at bed time, in that if he really wouldn't go to sleep before it was usually possible to 'boob him'! and I have given up doing any 'controlled crying' as it wasn't controlled and it was more like screaming! I keep telling myself that there's planty of time to sort out sleep training!
I hope this ramble has been useful! good luck

I stopped feeding DS2 a month ago when he was 1 months old. I'd got down from about 4 feeds when he was 1 to just the bed time feed. I dropped his 4pm one first, followed by 10am then ages later I dropped the morning one (hung onto it as he kept waking up at 5am!) and finally dropped the snuggley bed time one at 15 months.

I switched to bottles of cows milk for morning & 4pm "snack" feed, 10am went completely and the bed time one is a bottle of follow on milk.

Luckily, he was happy to take a bottle by this stage although up until about 1 he would scream blue murder if anyone tried to give him a bottle. If you can get someone else to give the bottle then that may be best - my DS2 could definitely smell the milk on me and would insist on breast feeding.

Make sure you're 100% ready to stop though - I suddenly thought "I don't want to stop!" after a few days and he bit me when I tried to feed him again!

Hope this helps!

Amee, I cut out the nighttime feeds when my son was 6 mo. which took about a week and my husband going to him when he woke up at night. I cut out the daytime feeds when he was 11 mo. and I went back to work. That was easy as he was with the childminder and I wasn't there to remind him about the breastmilk. I finally stopped the daily bedtime feed when he was around 14 mo. and I got pregnant again and it hurt too much. It took about 10 days before he forgot about the breastmilk completely. During that time my husband put him to bed every night. My son loved his breastmilk and was definitely reluctant to give it up. He drank cows milk for the childminder, but wouldn't for us until several months after cutting out the daytime feeds. I just gave him yogurt in the morning and lots of cheese in the interim. I went straight from the breast to a beaker and never introduced a nighttime bottle. So I won't have to deal with trying to wean him off a bottle. Also, when I introduced solids at 6 mo. I always gave him the solids before the breastmilk, so that he would be hungry when trying them. Good luck.