Breastfeeding and being away from baby

[notamorningpanda]

Hi, just wondering if anyone has any wisdom or experience they can share. I will have to travel for work soon. It's just for one day but I would be away from 6am till about 8pm so wouldn't see my baby at all that day. He will be 13 months by then and is down to just a morning feed at around 7:30am and a bedtime feed at 6:45pm. He's never had a bottle and I don't want to stop breastfeeding yet. Does anyone have any advice on how to get through it? Should I wake him for a feed before I go and offer a feed when I get back? Or should we go down the bottle route? If so, then what? Formula? Pump in advance somehow? Or cows milk? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! TIA :-)

What does he drink the rest of the day usually? Surely he doesn’t go 11 hours with nothing to drink?

If he's 13 months and only having 2 feeds a day then I don't think you will actually need to do anything?

As long as he's drinking water he'll be fine for the day, whoever's looking after him could try some cow's milk in a cup but ultimately at over 1 he'll be fine 🙂

The hardest thing might be managing bedtime if he feeds to sleep, but he'll likely do OK if he knows you're not there, my little one still feeds to sleep but she'll go to sleep laying with her dad if she knows I'm not around.

I would get up and go as normal in the morning. He can probably go straight to breakfast. Whoever has him (dad?) can try to put him to bed as normal. If he goes to sleep then great, if not he can stay up till you get home. You could offer some cows milk (or formula if you prefer but not really necessary) before bed, but he might not be bothered as it's probably a lot about routine and comfort.

You might find you are quite uncomfortable skipping 2 feeds though! In which case maybe see if he can stay up a bit later? Unless that will make him grumpy the next day.

PS. I definitely wouldn't introduce a bottle if he's never had one and he's over 1, ideally people want to be ditching bottles by this age, not bringing them in.

Tricky, at 13 months you don’t really need to give formula so assuming he’s having cow’s milk as part of his diet anyway he could have a drink of warm cow’s milk in a cup. If he’s never had a bottle there’s no point introducing one now.
The morning feed is likely to be the easiest one to drop so if he’s awake anyway you could feed him before you go but I wouldn’t wake him up especially. Bedtime might be difficult because he’ll want the comfort rather than the actual milk but hopefully a nice cuddle and cup of milk will do!

Thanks everyone, very helpful advice!