Toddler no longer wants to breastfeed

[WhiteHorse92]

Hi,

I have a 16 month old son, he was EBF up to 6 months and now has 2 breastfeeds a day, before his daytime nap and before bed. Last night at bedtime he latched on as usual then latched off within 10 seconds, he sort of tried to latch himself back on but then went and bit the end of my nipple. Very unusual for him to do that, tried the other breast but he completely refused and just pushed me away, so just put him to bed without a breastfeed. This afternoon before his nap, went to breastfeed him and he just looked at me, not interested in having a breastfeed and just pushed me away again. Is this my toddler basically saying he no longer wants to breastfeed? I know it's normal for toddlers to self - wean, I guess I just expected it to be more gradual than for him to just go cold turkey. Do I just stop offering him now? Do I still offer him a breastfeed before sleep just in case he wants it? He's a very good eater and also loves his cows milk, I think at this point it's more of a comfort thing for him. I'm happy to go with the flow and follow his lead, it's just sort of come out of nowhere and taken me by surprise, I imagined I'd breastfeed him up until 2 years at least and not a day has gone by in his life where he hasn't had a breastfeed so the thought makes me a bit sad 😭

Thanks for reading!

not Necessarily over I’m sure my dd use to lose interest sometimes then come back completely obsessed again 😬

Following with interest, DD is 16 months too, still breastfeeding, but I'm expecting to end up soon in the same situation.
It must be so bittersweet, isn't it. I've already got the feels. 😢

My eldest did this at about 9.5 months, I couldn't believe it. Thought she was ill etc, took her to GP, kept trying but to no avail. After a couple of weeks of trying we shrugged and said "I guess weaning is going well!".

At your stage when he's presumably taking plenty of solids and water etc I wouldn't worry at all, and would take it as natural weaning. Just make sure he's getting some form of milk for the calcium, vit D etc.

Yeah I think that's self-weaning!
my DD did similar - at 13 months she was down to just a quick 5 minutes in the morning. One day she fed for a minute then was just laughing at me and pulling away. The next day I just gave her a nice cuddle and that was it!

I'm not an expert, but it sounds to me like a nursing strike. It's too abrupt for it to be actual weaning, natural weaning would be slower.

Have you done some reading on La Leche?

I think 16 months is too young to wean naturally isn't it?

Here this might help

www.llli.org/breastfeeding-info/nursing-strikes/

My daughter had a nursing strike recently (lasted about 9 days). I was pretty upset by the whole thing but she soon returned to her boob obsession!

In our case she was poorly and it was hurting too much to nurse, so she was avoiding it.

Ahhh thank you that's helpful, it does sound like a nursing strike. Last night when it started he did latch straight away initially then bit me instead of latching back on, I didn't shout at him but I did loudly say 'ouch ouch ouch' in pain and he gave me an upset look so I'm hoping I didn't scare him and put him off 😭

May be teething (the biting - ouch!!!)? Maybe it's just time. For me it just dwindled down very slowly but for other people I know it was more abrupt.