Definitely ready to stop BFing at 7 months but baby is refusing formula - help?

[Stoppityboppity]

I’ve EBF for 7 months and I’m totally ready to stop now (especially now DS has two teeth 😰), but he won’t yet take formula at all.

We’ve tried a sippy cup, straw cups, open cup, syringe, his newborn bottles (because that’s what we had from pumping/expressing), an ordinary mug, but he just opens his mouth and lets the milk run out. I’ve tried Aptamil and Cow and Gate so far, but definitely open to suggestions for other vessels or brands to try.

I’m so ready to have my body back. Daytime is not so bad, but he wants to feed to sleep and resettle constantly by feeding at night. We’re in the process of moving him into his own room and I think/hope that taking a bottle, even if it’s just one before bed at this stage, might help him sleep better and will also mean I can have a couple of Aperol spritzes on holiday in the summer.

If you had this situation with your baby, what helped/worked? TIA 🙏

You could try mixing a bit of expressed milk with increasing proportions of formula to get him used to the different taste.

As your baby is over Months you can go straight to cows milk along side solids. https://theconversation.com/when-can-my-baby-drink-cows-milk-its-sooner-than-you-think-227044

@DrJump Thanks for sharing! That’s very interesting

@DrJump it looks like that’s if babies are already formula-fed? DS is breastfed only at the moment which is what we’re trying to change, but thank you, it’s an interesting article

I think tackle sleep training and moving into his room first. You can't do it all at once.

I was you except my baby has CMPA and the allergy formula tastes horrible so there was no point trying too hard.

It forced me to continue and I'm still breastfeeding at 10 months and it's actually extremely useful. We sleep trained at 5.5 months. I reduced feeds by time until he was only suckling for a minute and at that point I would send dad in to comfort. He would cry in frustration for a few minutes but he settled incredibly quickly. He soon dropped the feeds by himself until we only had the one feed, at 3am. He dropped that 2 weeks ago, totally by himself.

So waking in the night is not that big of an issue. I never, ever feed to sleep. If I see him falling asleep, I unlatch him and comfort him.

Breastfeeding is mega easy now and it's so helpful when he's teething, anxious etc. It relaxes him and comforts him really quickly. Also, he's taken well to meals but his milk intake is so random and it means I'm not making random extra bottles/wasting anything.

Separate the feeding and sleep.

Stop feeding to sleep and night wean. Then you might feel better about breastfeeding or it would likely be easier to switch to formula.

There is no evidence that bottles make children sleep better. But it could make it harder to settle him when he wakes as the magic boob is gone.
Night weaning also tends to lead to an earlier end to breastfeeding altogether so if you want to keep breastfeeding during the day then that's something to consider.

The teeth thing is a short (but I know a painful) phase. They get used to having teeth and will stop biting. I promise.

Do you have a local La Leche League group you could visit and get some knowledgeable advice?

Thanks so much for all of your replies! DH is re-settling DS, and has been doing the majority of night-wakings and bedtimes once I’ve fed DS for the night, which I do feel guilty about but I think will help us to night-wean and hopefully get some more sleep. DS sees/senses me and just wants milk. We know that he can go from 9ish to 5am-ish without feeding as he’s done it on several occasions before, so we’re hoping that DH settling him will help with that, although it’s hard in the short term and I feel doubly useless if I’m not feeding him and also not settling him.

Thank you, I think this is how we need to go. I’m totally guilty of feeding to sleep as it was so easy when he was tinier and felt like a short-cut to get him to sleep. Unfortunately it’s now not working for us as he wants it every time he wakes up!

DH has taken to bouncing DS to get him back to sleep. Will that create another kind of crutch instead of self-soothing, or is that OK in the short term? Is there any other way to teach self-soothing than leaving them to work it out (for a very short space of time before going in and comforting them)?

Highly recommend following Lucy Webber Feeding Support on Instagram and The Breastfeeding Mentor for the feeding side of it. Take a look through some of Lucy’s highlights.

Lyndsey Hookway and Second Star to the Right sleep both have factual info on sleep.

We had this with my first at about 10 months. Eventually we found she’d take Mam bottles and kendamil formula. But I had to be out of the house at first and then out of the way for a while after that. We gradually weaned down the breastfeeding and increased the formula.

When it came to stopping the feeding to sleep, we introduced a soft toy comforter that we always gave her for sleeping so she built up an association with that for sleep. She still sleeps with it now she’s 2.5.

It’s tough OP but don’t despair, it is do-able with perseverance and finding the right tools.

If you're trying to stop the breastfeeding association then consider bouncing a stepping stone to self-settling.

I'd add a comforter now if you haven't already, something that DS can use without a parent like a muslin or dummy. Have the muslin snuggled with you when you feed during the day and snuggled with DH when he bounces him to sleep.
You could introduce bedtime music or white noise while he's bouncing too.

Once DH can settle the baby with bouncing (and comforter/sound) then move to just cuddling with the comforter/sound.
Once he's settled by cuddles you can have DH settle him in the cot with comforter just before he falls asleep and pat him or rest a hand on him in the cot.
Basically you introduce independent sleep crutches and then reduce/phase out the parent-dependent crutches.

It's slower than leaving them to cry of course!

Could you express/pump and then mix in the breastmilk with formula? Do it over a transition of a few weeks by decreasing the breast milk and increasing the formula? If you stop it also helps you to reduce your milk gradually too. Or keep pumping the same amount if you find you might not want to stop but need a break?