Weaning 9 month old

[Nikamon]

I wanted to wean my 8 month old. Give him the bottle. Since he's 6 months he refuses all bottles and pacifiers. First we weaned at night. That was easy, papa took over the nights (not easy for the papa). The baby still wakes up almost as often as to breastfeed and needs to be carried to fall back asleep. It's been three weeks. We took one week to try to give bottle in the morning when he's very hungry, I'm hiding and my partner gives the bottle - no chance, once the baby even waited until noon and did one nap in between with no food. Now the baby got sick and it's on antibiotics. He's cluster feeding all day. I'm so done. He's 9 months now and instead of weaning I feel like I'm back with a 2 month old. He also doesn't want to eat much solids. Any advice?

9 months is difficult as it’s a huge sleep regression. It sounds as though he’s poorly at the moment too so it’s perfectly natural that he wants the comfort and closeness of BFing and being with you. I do understand how overwhelming that can be at times though.

as he’s portly I’d try and have a quiet day today if you can and feed him as much as he wants.

Make a plan for when he’s feeling better. You’re aiming to drop a feed every two weeks. This is to let him adjust to the new amounts he has to eat and drink and to reduce your risk of mastitis.

So maybe start with DH getting him up and going straight to breakfast and offering a cup of formula with his breakfast instead of a bottle? By 10 months he’ll only need 450 mls a day of formula and that’s if he was totally FF so you don’t need to worth too much about giving him huge bottles in the day.

I’d carry on feeding him before his two naps and before tea and bed for now, if that’s what you do.

Once he’s got used to breakfast being good and a cup of milk, I’d swap the feed before his lunch or tea for just the meal along with a cup of cup of formula and his food. Then leave it two weeks and do the same with the other meal.

So that should be about 6ish weeks and you’ll be down to feeding before the two naps and before bed and he’ll be coming up to 11 months?

Some people find that dropping the bedtime feed is easier if you go out for a few evenings, I don’t know if you want to try that and leave DH with him and a bottle?

Once he’s 12 months you can try some
gentle night weaning. This method is aimed at parents where the baby is BF but works for Combi or FF babies too.

If you want to drop the feeds more quickly you can. Some leave it a week between dropping a feed and dropping another.

I think though as he’s poorly I’d just feed him as much as he wants for now and get DH to bring you some snacks and drinks

Hs he ever had a bottle before you tried to wean him? If he’s been ebf with no bottles at all then it’s going to be a big change for him and will take a while to get used to. Some babies don’t take to a bottle at all if they’ve never had one. It may be better just to wait until he’s ready to drink milk from a cup instead of trying to introduce bottles now. What is he eating in a day? Could you offer a cup of milk after his meals?

Yeah neither of mine woukd ever take a bottle hence my suggestion of trying cups instead

Yes he did take a bottle once a day every day for 5 months and then at 6 months old he stopped. He pushes any bottle away even before it touches his lips. From the open cup (or any cup) he drinks only plain water, as soon as it's any type of milk he rejects it. I don't think it's a phase as it's been almost 4 months now. I tried my partner and mother feeding him when I'm away, he'd rather starve than do it. Also doesn't accept milk in a spoon. Hates syringe feeding. Just refuses any milk unless it's directly from the breast. Tried 4 formula milks and expressed milk. Sometimes even refuses porridge if it was prepared with milk. I tried mixing milk with fruit porridge, also not. I don't think he feeds for comfort, I think I know how this is, and I would say he really is hungry when he wants the boob. And solids cut it only to some point. Now I have less milk and he gets very upset when it finishes, trying the other boob constantly to get the last drops. He's able to survive the night without feeding, just keeps waking up until he gets his feed, then he sleeps soundly. I don't know what to do I can't keep breastfeeding due to medical reasons, I'm torn.

Have you got proper medical advice on needing to stop as a lot of medical professionals will say you need to for certain medication or certain reasons when it's not true. If it's for medication then check on the breastfeeding drugs network.

He's already night weaned. But sometimes I feed him once between 4 and 6 am to stop him from waking up and get more sleep. Snacks won't cut it, I'm actually sick and I desperately need to let my body recover, I was also told by the doctor I have to stop breastfeeding. I was not able to drop any feed, as, as I wrote, he won't take milk in any other form than directly from the boob. Longest we tried was 16 hours with no food at all and still he insisted on boob.

All that mainstream advice sounds nice, except it doesn't work, I wonder if people just repeat it thoughtlessly or are there babies out there who follow all this stuff.

If the medical reasons are that you’ve been prescribed a drug that says you can’t take it whilst BFing, I would definitely agree with the PP about contacting the BFN drugs service. It happened to me and with theor help I managed to continue taking the drugs and BFing.

If you do want or need to stop BFing I would talk to one of the BFing Helplines about transitioning a reluctant baby.

Also they don’t actually need as much milk as you think at this age. If you were to he fully FFing it would be 600 ml a day but by 10 months that drops down to 450.

If some of his feeds are still BFs you don’t have to worry about the amount of formula he’s having as he will he taking enough from you.

Like I said though it sounds as though you’d be best talking to a BFC on one of the Helplines

Sorry I posted again before seeing your update. I’m sorry that you’re ill and hope you recover. All of the advice I link to on MN is evidence based or from my own experience but if you’re finding unhelpful I’ll take myself off this thread.

I wish you well OP.

I was in a similar situation. I needed to stop breastfeeding for my health and to start medication I couldn't breastfeed on having tried all of the options I could breastfeed on.
My daughter had a bottle aversion caused by the GP prescribing her a formula that she was allergic too and she couldn't even look at a bottle. She had a lot of food allergies and there turned out to be only 1 formula that she could have and it tasted foul. We did manage to get her to take it in food although she ate very little food maybe quarter of a Weetabix a few pieces of pasta and a handful of peas a day. She wouldn't accept any liquids in any cups or bottles
At 9 months she started at nursery 2 days a week and accepted between 0 and 6oz of formula a day from them over 2 bottles but would accept it from us except in Weetabix.
I ended up on hospital due to my physical and mental health and collapsed with very low blood pressure and sugars. We made the very difficult decision to send my daughter home to dad to see if she would accept formula from him without me being there at all. She went 26h without a drink and only hand some bowls of Weetabix with some formula in it. She went the nursery the next day and drank 2 5oz bottles there and from that moment on she was formula fed. I came home on weekend leave after a few days and she never asked for a breastfeed. Over that weekend only my partner fed her but on the Sunday night she returned to hospital with me and accepted the bottle from me too. I was able to change my medication and my health started to improve.

Oh wow it sounds terrible. Happy you're doing better now :)