Thinking of stopping breastfeeding when my son turns 1

[OneLilac]

Hi I’ve been exclusively breastfeeding my son who will be 1 next week and I really want to stop. He doesn’t like formula and we’ve tried him on cows milk just so he gets a taste but he only has a few sips then won’t touch it. He eats a lot throughout the day but most of the time I’ll give him a feed and he’ll go to sleep. How do I start the process of stopping breastfeeding

I stopped when dt were 13 months (cut down from slowly from first birthday). I started off by stopping 'top up /comfort feeds' by distraction.
So then they were just having morning and night feed. The morning was easier to stop as I could distract, change routine slightly and give solids.
The bedtime feed was harder so I reduced the time of each feed till hardly any then started giving a drink of water to dt1 (who wouldn't drink milk) and a cup of milk to dt2 before the feed till they no longer wanted the top up.
Dont worry about dc not drinking the milk, my health visitor advice at the time (albeit 15 years ago) was add milk to food, use other sources such as cheese, rice pudding etc. At forst i calculated by portion as I was worried dt1 wasnt getting enough. Dt1 would have milk with whetabix or porridge where it was quite well disguised which helped.

Personally I wouldn’t worry about him not having Cow’s Milk at this stage, neither of mine would really drink any quantity of it at all until BFing had stopped completely and who could blame them?

How often are you feeding at the moment, both day and night?

At the moment he has a morning feed for his morning nap, usually one after lunch for his nap and then occasionally before dinner or before bed.

He doesn’t really like breakfast if I’m honest, he used to have toast or porridge until a few months ago he just completely went off it all

Just here to see if there's any tips. I'm still breastfeeding my 13 month old. I dont actually want to stop but would love to cut it down to 2 feeds a day! He still wants to feed many many times of day and night though and absolutely kicks off if I don't! He's absolutely fine without 3 days a week when he's at nursery though.

I went with the “don’t offer, don’t refuse” method…we were done by the end of the week. We were so busy they didn’t even think of it and they naturally just weaned off.

I never offer but my baby 'asks' frequently!

I went with the never offer, never refuse. Mine all gave up 12 - 16 months.

So is he already night weaned @OneLilac?

Just drop a feed every couple of days.

Yeah I had to stop that at 3.5 😂 I think he still misses it a year later 😢

if he’s still feeding overnight that’s the hardest to crack imo. During the day the right clothing and keeping busy, offer a snack or drink first if they ask for milk.

He’ll have a feed to go to sleep then wake once in the night for another then goes till morning

Ok so probably the best thing to do is to table the night feed first.

The problem with dropping daytime feeds before they’re night weaned us that it can just lead to more night wakings.

I’d still do the feed before bed but then use this very gentle night weaning method.

Once you’ve cracked him waking for a feed at night and you’ve given him a week or two then I’d drop the feed after his nap. This one can usually be replaced wirh a nice drink and a snack.

If you give yourself obe or two weeks between dropping each feed it should give him time to adjust to the new routing and it should also reduce your risk of Mastitis, and nobody wants that for Christmas