Breastfeeding and wanting to stop. How did you do it?

[JasminP]

Hey everyone, 🙋‍♀️.
I just need a bit of help really, I am wanting to stop breastfeeding my Daughter, she's just 3 months old. She's a terrible sleeper, sleeps all day up all night, so as you can imagine I'm exhausted. Also she eats little but very often. I also have a 3yr old boy so it's making me feel so exhausted as she wants to feed lots throughout the night.
I'm stuck with how I actually do it, how did you girls ween your babies off and onto bottles.
Any help will really help me.
😊😁

Do you have a partner who can help?

My situation is slightly different, I breastfed for about 14 months but I was ready to stop from earlier.

After having mastitis 3 times (got it if I missed feeds) I would recommend you do it gradually. Your DD will associate you with feeds and smell your milk, how I did it was get DH to do the bottle feeds until she adapted, and only swapped over one feed a day initially. If she hates formula try expressing and then mix to half and half breast milk and formula, until eventually it’s all formula.

It is very hard, you’ve given her an amazing start in life but you need to give yourself a break before you burn out. Three months is brilliant, especially when you already have a child to focus on. I am already preparing to combi feed my second (due in Feb) as I want flexibility for the sake of my toddler.

Good luck x

I mix fed and stopped at 4 months. I had a 20 month old as well and was just finding it hard to manage frequent breastfeeds and entertaining her at the same time.

I just went cold turkey after reducing to 2 or 3 feeds per day naturally over the previous couple of weeks.

Didn’t have any issues but I didn’t have any problems with mastitis or anything when I was feeding either.

Will she take a bottle? I just started replacing feeds with bottles; once she was on 3 bottles a day I continued 2-3 breastfeeds a day as it felt manageable that way, my DD was happy and slept well and I liked that I was still breastfeeding a bit. I confined that until about 6 months then dropped to one feed. However if you wanted to drop them all you could but I would recommend doing it over a couple of weeks and giving your body 2-3 days to get used to a feed being dropped before moving on to the next one so you don’t get engorged

I came in here to write this thread! I have a 5 month old and I’m just ready to stop now, he’s becoming more and more dependent on me for sleep and I feel like it should be going the other way now. I’m basically a human dummy. I’m going to start by doing one bottle a day. He’s had formula once or twice so hopefully he takes to it, I think it’s going to be more the settling him without bf’ing that’s going to be the issue

Thank you everyone for your advice, it's defiantly helped me a lot, as before I had no idea on where to begin. Yes my partner helps as much as he can already, with fitting it in around work etc. I have introduced a formular bottle mixed with breast milk. She has no problem with a bottle, she takes to it well. She also uses my boob as a dummy, as comfort to get herself to sleep, so maybe this will take some time! Has the formular given any of your babies constipation?

Hazanddducks all the best for Feb!

@Lelly0503 me too! Scared to stop bfing for the settling reason! Xx

@russell19 it’s a catch 22 because fortunately bf’ing has gone really well so has actually been a lot easier than formula/sterilising etc but now it’s more a hindrance! I’m in a habit of if he’s unsettled/crying/whinging il just offer a feed which usually settles him, that’s fine for when I’m around but I’m wanting a bit more independence now like going to the gym in the evenings and he’s so reliant on me it’s stressful leaving him!

@Lelly0503
I can relate to that too. I'm finding my second one defiantly a lot harder than my 1st! Is it true what they say, girls are more hard work than boys?

I'm the same! Boob solves everything!

I'm finding this difficult to work out. Do I swap a breast feed with one formular feed once each day or each week. If that makes sense.

Have you thought about co sleeping? Once I was able to co sleep and lie down and feed it all became so much easier for me. Also introducing formula may not make her sleep any longer so you might not get much more sleep. As far as the not being able to leave your baby at all that does also get easier with age.

I totally get that it's hard tho and at the end of the day you need to both be happy I was just giving a different suggestion x

@Lelly0503 I could have written the exact same thing!!

My DS is only two months old but I want to begin bf'jng less and adding in bottles. Boob is the answer to everything for him at the moment which is a gift and a curse!! He cries constantly with DH if I pop out of the house for an hour. My plan is to get him more or less off the boob by the time he starts weaning, just not sure how!!

I went cold turkey - don’t do that!

Why wasn't going cold turkey a good idea?

Yep @AnnieCat84 we have the same problem, im Now a week into weaning off bf’ing - I dropped one feed one day, then two, now on three. As the bf’ing has dropped I think where my milk is reducing he’s relying on it less and less each day. I’m hoping that when my milk completely dries up the milk smell will fade and he will forget he was ever breastfed, and he’ll settle other ways.

What @upups says, co sleeping has been our game changer!