Breastfeeding Question 🤔

[LouLouT83]

Hi everyone,
I have been happily exclusively breastfeeding my 8 months old little girl.
She is now eating 3 meals a day, drinking water with her meals and having a few healthy snacks here and there.
She’s getting her 5th tooth and breastfeeding has become quite uncomfortable for me personally. Her suck has strengthened and I’m finding that I’m curling my toes during feeds and not enjoying it anymore. I was aiming to feed her for 6 months so I’ve surpassed my target!
The trouble is, she still wanted around 3 feeds per day.
I can’t go cold turkey on her because I know she needs the nutrients etc from the milk for development. I don’t want to give her formula (cost, faff etc) really but I’m just wondering how other mums in a similar position to me have done it?
I know she can have cows milk from 1 but that’s still 4 months away so I’m not sure how to bridge the gap between now and then!!

Thanks xx

[Seeline]

Express and then either give a bottle or cup?

[Aomame83]

I managed just short of 9 months of ebf. I hadn't wanted to go onto formula, but it worked out for us in the end. I needed to stop feeding for a number of reasons and pumping didn't work for me. The only issue I had was transferring to a bottle and it took a couple of weeks to get my child used to it. We ended up using the Tommee Tippee closer to nature bottles.
Due to the reduced quantity/frequency of feeds at that age, the faff with bottle feeding is minimal. We bought a microwave steriliser and used Aptamil formula, moving to cows milk at 1.

[dinosaurglitterrepublic]

It’s breast milk or formula, there isn’t really a third option to bridge the gap! As mentioned, pumping is a possibility to avoid directly feeding, but I couldn’t really be bothered with that once I had decided to stop bf, it’s way more effort than formula. Formula isn’t that much of a faff once you get used to it and it’s only for a few months. If you want your boobs back just go for it.

[BertieBotts]

You need to either stick with it (I did find that the discomfort from a new tooth lasted a couple of days but then passed) or transition those three feeds over to formula until she drops them, she's too little for cow's milk and still needs the nutrients. She will probably still need three milk feeds for a little while before dropping to two and then one which she might well keep for a long time yet.

You could make the three bottles for the day in the morning and keep them in the fridge until needed to minimise faffing. It's not the best way but it is the second best, at 8 months this should be fine (it's your call though).

I don't think you'll find expressing very easy at this stage if you aren't already doing it regularly as you tend not to have the supply to do it unless it's built up over time.