When DS1 was born I was very determined to get it all right and had read basically all of Kellymom during pregnancy.
He was EBF with no bottles or dummies, but I pumped daily as I had read that it was so important to have a freezer stash in the event I ended up in hospital or similar. I was terrified of ruining his virgin gut as the message I got from forum posts and blog posts about it was that even a single formula feed would harm my baby for life.
I did strict BLW and continued to breastfeed on demand because I had read that anything else could lead to premature weaning. Very little food was swallowed as he was always filling up on milk and he probably didn't ever reduce the amount of milk he was taking until he started nursery at 2 yrs old. Even now we sometimes struggle with him thinking he can just taste a tiny bit of food and then get something "nice".
I continued to breastfeed in the mornings and evenings, then only evenings when he was 3. Then I developed a strong nursing aversion and stopped even though it had always been my goal to keep going until he self-weaned, but I felt like I took out my negative emotions about BF on DS and it wasn't right.
Looking back my relationship with my DH wasn't great as I was so busy just being a mum and he didn't really get the chance to bond properly with DS1 because he was so dependent on me for so long (also BF to sleep all along).
Now DS2 is coming up to 4 months and is EBF, but uses dummies and has a bottle of ebm every evening. We have a few formula cartons in the cupboard instead of a freezer stash of breast milk, but they haven't been needed so far. I don't feed to sleep and DH can easily feed and settle DS2 while I get some quality time with DS1. Everyone is happy.
What I do struggle a bit with is what to do when it comes to weaning. I want to do traditional weaning (with plenty of finger foods) so that DS2 actually starts eating solids from 6 months and I could perhaps start dropping breastfeeds by 8 months or so. I don't want to feed on demand once weaning is established. I hope to continue to BF once or twice a day past 12 months, but don't want to sacrifice too much in order to avoid "premature weaning". In the grand scheme of things, it isn't a big deal for a child in the western world to stop breastfeeding before 2.
I have read up on the science and feel confident that what I am planning to do is perfectly fine for my baby's health and best for me personally and for us as a family, but still I can't help thinking that this is unfair to DS2 in case he ends up stopping breastfeeding way earlier than DS1 did because of it.
I guess what I am hoping for is some reassurance that you don't have to do everything the same way with your subsequent DCs just because you did it with your first? Does anyone have any useful experiences to share?