How to stop breastfeeding, especially at night for an EBF baby

[HJJ]

Hi all,

I am just looking for some advice or tips.

My baby is going to be 1 in a couple of weeks and he has always been EBF and doesn’t really take the bottle. I have now gone back to work and whilst being looked after by my family or being with his dad he is has been fine and I guess he doesn’t want it as I’m not there (out of sight out of mind). I’ve started to drop the daytime feeds when I am around and he isn’t too fussed.

However I have fed him to sleep every night for a year so I know this one is going to be difficult to drop. He also still wakes 1-3 times a night and I feed him back to sleep and he goes straight back down. A couple of times my partner has tried to rock him to sleep but he gets in such a state I can’t bear it.

I feel I am now ready to stop breastfeeding, does anybody have any advice on how I can drop the evening feeds? Have people replaced this with cows milk before bed instead?

Thank you!

Partner is the key here I’m afraid. Mine was EBF, I went back to work at 6 months, with DH taking shared parental leave. DD was feeding every 3 hours through the night, but happily went 5-6 hours during the day. Over about a 3 week period, I would feed to sleep as normal, then dream feed around 2300, DH would then resettle any wake ups less than 5 hours after the dream feed. She never took a bottle, so just rocking and singing. By 3 weeks we were reliably going 2300-0600. She was much younger and solid food obviously started increasing too, which helped.
This was during lockdown 3, so DH would just bring her to me for daytime feeds, which increased initially then gradually spaced out too. As yours is older, they should be fine on solids during the day.

Which do you want to do first, night weaning or the bedtime feed?

If it were me I would try some gentle night weaning first them when he’s got used to that try dropping the bedtime feed. It will probably be easier if you go out and leave DH to give him some milk and put him to bed.