Ho w to wean a 14-month-old who BFs 6 times a day?

[vesela]

I need to start weaning my 14-month-old DD so as to have the best chance with TTC#2 (I know you can get pregnant while BFing, but I'm 40, and it took a year to get pregnant with DD). Weaning feels like an insurmountable task, though.

Lots of babies this age seem to be on night/morning BFs only, whereas she BFs about 6 times a day. (It feels as if she needs to that often to keep my supply up.) She was in hospital a month ago with a kidney infection, during which time I had to weigh her before and after each feed - ! - but it was helpful in that I discovered she was getting 350-450 ml of milk a day, i.e. about right for her age.

She's always BFed a lot for comfort (she's never had a dummy, or a bottle) and also BFs to sleep at naptime, and pretty often at night too (especially since hospital).

We gave her her first formula today (in a cup) - total lack of interest. I'll keep trying, inc. with cow's milk - if she refuses that, too, can I wean to yoghurt?! (which she loves, although 3x a day could be too much...)

She's just about to start walking, too, so I want to take the weaning slowly. I also need to keep her fluid intake up because of the kidney infection she had.

Any ideas on how to make a start? Just play around with the formula/cow's milk for a couple of weeks while keeping same no. of BFs, or 'cut out' feeds?

p.s. maybe a better idea to give her milk in an open cup so she can see it - she was probably expecting it to be water as usual, and I know babies this age can have pretty fixed ideas about what they drink from what.

My two never had any milk to drink apart from breast milk - all their dairy was from yoghurt and cheese.

They absolutely loathed formula and cows milk.

So by all means keep offering alternatives milk but I personally think that fluid in general is more important than milk - as long as there is plenty of dairy in the diet.

Do you drink milk yourself? If so make a great flourish of drinking YOUR milk; special glass etc and then when she asks to have some let her have some from your glass. It might work.

I also wore clothes I couldn't feed in during the day - dresses; non-feeding bras etc just to stop the frequent "I'm bored/upset/cuddly" feeds that happened all day when I was around. I'm sure she copes well without you (when you leave her with your partner? Mum? Friends?) so hopefully you know she can be comforted in another way and will have the confidence to develop other ways of calming her yourself (a big challenge when a feed is so much easier - but TTC is a good incentive!)

Good luck

I have just given up bfeding 20mo DD2 this week. You need to distract your LO every time they want a feed. Maybe start by just feeding 1st and last thing in the day plus at naptime and distract at other times. 6 feeds seems a lot. I mean, difficult to wean unless you cut back first.

would deffo wait till she's walking, my LO needed a bit more night time security around that stage.

can't help any further i'm afraid, not weaning just yet...

maybe try cutting out the night feeds first ? that's when your hormones are at optimal 'increasemilk production' levels so if you start with those you might find that your cycle restarts and you can still keep some daytime feeds, therein taking it very slowly, whilst at the same time TTCing ?

would deffo wait till she's walking, my LO needed a bit more night time security around that stage.

can't help any further i'm afraid, not weaning just yet...

maybe try cutting out the night feeds first ? that's when your hormones are at optimal 'increasemilk production' levels so if you start with those you might find that your cycle restarts and you can still keep some daytime feeds, therein taking it very slowly, whilst at the same time TTCing ?

I never gave cows' milk or formula either...

DD was feeding that often at that age. I introduced cows milk (very cold) and she simply upped her fluids. However at 16 months she just suddenly cut down - I think it may be that they hit a point where they have more interesting things - with her it was when she started walking a lot and also eating a lot more solid food. So hopefully things will reduce a bit.

However we also found if I never said no, but only let her feed for five minutes and then physically removed her from my boobs (normally presenting her with a cup or toy to hold instead) she would accept it and learned not to nurse so often. She's still on three feeds a day now though - although the night one is only five minutes now.

BTW I'm 31 weeks pregnant and we conceived twice since having her (miscarried the first one). Do you have signs of fertility at all?

Thanks a lot, this is so helpful. Yes, I've had periods since 9 months pp, but I think my luteal phase is too short (esp. since I ramped up the BFing a month ago in hospital when she was being iffy about her water cup!)

gagarin, I drink milk and I bet she'd want some out of my cup. Good idea. I was only going with the formula first because I thought it would taste more like BM.

My fear is that cutting out BFing while refusing other milk = less fluid, plus if I keep waving cups of milk at her, she might go off her water cup too (it's enough stress getting her to drink enough water from her cup - I feel so dependent on when she decides to pick it up, watching the mls go down...) and top priority is making sure she gets enough fluid one way or another.

There's fluid in yoghurt, though...

there's fluid in all food, vesela, even though you wouldn't think it !

Get a doidy cup - they like the independence of them and you can get one too and then have it summarily ripped from your fingers and stolen by your LO.

DD will only drink very cold milk - I don't see why giving formula would work - you try it - it's nasty stuff. It doesn't taste like BM either. It tastes like gone off watered down cows milk - which is unsurprising considering what it is.

At the risk of being villified, I have been also known to give DD banana milkshake (a banana liquidised into full fat milk), the surprise value got that down her!

Um smoothies made with cows / rice / oats milk go down quite well too, and you have the added benefit of lots of vits, minerals, phytonutrients etc...