dreading giving up bf....help me pls

[trishpops]

i have decided to give up bfing when my dd is 6mnths old, for two reasons:
one , i will have to go back to work 6 wks later, and shift pattern will prevent maintaining even one regular feed a day.
two, dd currently only takes just enough from a bottle to take the edge off her hunger which means in 5 mnths i have never had more than 5 hrs sleep in a row...this is making me ill and putting huge strain on my marriage.
as you can see from my efforts to justify giving up bf i feel very very upset and guilty about it but feel i'm at the end of my tether so pls don't tell me off for giving up!
the main reason i'm so worried about giving up bf is that dd has always had a really long feed in the evening, until she falls asleep, and i just don't know how i'm going to get her to sleep with a bottle. i'm dreading the possibility of her screaming as i don't think i have the strength to refuse to feed her if she gets upset. can anyone give thier experiences?

trishpops, no one should be telling you off!! As if!!

Can I suggest you think again about your options, though? I can't see anything in your post which makes me think giving up is your only choice...sorry.

No more than 5 hours sleep in a row is (sorry again) not at all unusual in any mother of a young baby - breast or bottle fed. Working round this somehow, so the broken sleep is less disruptive than it would otherwise be, can be done. I don't understand why this would impact on your marriage or make you ill - is there something else going on here?

Your dd will be 7.5 mths old when you are back at work - will your work patterns mean you won't be able to feed her ever in the evening? or just some evenings? Some mothers find they are just fine feeding when they are there, and not feeding when they aren't - so when mummy isn't there, whoever puts the baby to bed uses other soothing strategies, like a cup (bottles aren't necessary anyway), with a signing, rocking ritual..whatever.

Babies - especially as they get older, and understand more, as your dd will at 7.5 mths - accept the different regimes for different people

my ds is just over a year and still mixed bf and ff. Sometimes can go weeks with just evening and night bf, then if I'm home like at the mo she exclusively bf's. My milkflow goes up and dow no probs and as long as she's fed she doesn't seem to mind. If you want to bf why not try just bedtime or morning feeds? Thought about expressing for when you really can't fit a feed in?

i would love to be able to maintain one feed a day, but i won't won't be able to bf her some evenings a week, or some mornings a week depending on shifts, and my boobs get engorged and very painful when dd sleeps through the night so there is no way i can do an 8hr shift without expressing...and i work on a busy ward so no guarantee i can get away to do this. at least at the moment anyway, i suppose cutting down gradually before then will help with engorgement.
tiktok, you are correct when you guess there are other things going on....dd sleeps for 10hrs quite regularly, it's me that cannot sleep for other reasons! the strain on my marriage is because i'm exhausted and feeling trapped by bfing, and my partner can't understand that although sometimes i feel anger and resentment about BFing, i also love it and will really miss it when it's over. i'm sure i'm not alone in feeling like this.
she won't feed properly from a bottle, loves comfort sucking but won't have a dummy....i can't be away from her for more than an few hours because of this.
because i'm stressed anyway i felt that giving up bf well before returning to work would be one less problem to deal with, if that makes sense.....not that bf is currently a problem, it's the thought of having a battle to get her to give up the breast that scares me.I nkow some children self wean without problems, but she may not be one of them. i don't know anyone in RL who can help me with this as they all FF, or thier children all took a bottle and/or dummy well if BF.
i have such mixed feelings about stopping bf, but i do think it'll be easier for me to go back to work knowing she takes a bottle well....i can't stand the thought of her crying for me at night, so i thought at least weaning her off the breast she can get used to her dad putting her to bed most nights.

trishpops - you need to talk to someone in RL about this.

She does not need a bottle, she can have a cup. She will be 7.5 months when you return to work, and on solid food. You do not need to stop breastfeeding to accommodate any of this - breastfeeding can continue if you want it to, and if stopping makes you feel upset and guilty, then the answer is not to stop

Bf does not have to 'trap' you. Plenty of women work and do other things without their babies and carry on bf...if they want to. If you don't want to, then of course it's a different matter, but everything in your posts indicates you don't want to stop!

Work places have to provide you with opportunity and space to express breastmilk - this is the law. If your employer is resisting, then your union if you have one should step in, and if you haven't, then your HR department should back you up.

I hope there is a chance for you to talk all this through - it sounds as if it is making you very stressed

Why can't you sleep? Do you thnk you might possibly be feeling depressed?

Hello

On my worktop right now is a bottle of boiled water ready for my son's first ever 4.30pm feed that does not come from me (hopefully from a doidy cup, but I may try a bottle which he has previously refused). I am starting weaning off the breast today as I am going back to work in two months, although part time and no shifts I know how you feel, but I too felt that giving up bf would make me less tired. I have a lot going on including counselling.

My ds is only just starting to sleep 5-6 hours at a stretch but I cope well with that, I found it a lot harder when he woke every 3 hours .

I wanted to stop bf altogether and posted on here. i got some good responses and I have now decided to start with the daytime feeds and see how I go then. Keeping my options open gives me a lot of peace. Maybe you can do the same. Drop a few feeds, see how it makes you feel?

But whatever you do, 6 months bf is FAB and no one has the right to criticise you.

thank you thank tyou thank you all for your messages. i've got tears in my eyes. so good to get some understanding. yes i do think i'm a bit depressed....had a lot going on since dd's birth, was given some bad family news less thn 24hrs after she was born and that has affected my experience of motherhood negatively. however i'm beginning to enjoy it a lot more and i think the prospect of going back to work is the spectre looming over the feast, perhaps that's why i'm fixating on giving up bf rather than just enjoying it and seeing how it goes.....
madmouse - thank you so much, that is good advice. really hope it goes well this afternoon, keep me posted!
i'm going to keep going with bf for a while longer....but a big part of me wishes that dd would take a bottle as i dream of having a whole night off to myself. the prob is that on the rare occasion my mum or partener has babysat, she will not drink more than 2oz and is ravenous within couple of hours.
(she's never gone longer than 4 hrs without feeding except some nights. never longer than 3 hrs in day.tried getting into routines etc all to no avail and much distress)
tiktok, good point about cup, keep forgetting that she will be able to go without bottle when older. is any cup ok, or is there one you recomend?

trish - that pattern is normal, never going more than 3 hours day, 4 hours night

Any cup would be fine, but post on weaning board for up to date consumer reports!

Sounds to me that life will be easier when she takes some solids and when she can manage fluids from a cup - you won't be 100 per cent respons. for her intake and others can care for her when you are not there.

tommee tippee old fashioned type beakers are great and doidy cups, I got one of each free from health visitor at weaning party. Any with 2 handles seem to work though. Expect loads of wet clothes and floors first though lol!

trishpops - i don't really have much advice beyond what has been given here, but you have much empathy from me. i have a 6mo DS and i've had real problems sleeping for the last 3 months even on nights my DS has slept well, so i know how exhausting and upsetting it is, and just how frustrating it is when you have a sleeping baby but you are wide awake yourself, or when you just drop off to sleep only to be woken by your baby looking for a feed.

on top of that, i've had a less than perfect time bf and feel very ambivalent about it, even though it is finally going pretty well now. i'm trying to decide when/whether to give up and i know how tough it is to make that decision.

it is helping that now DS is on solids, and has a particularly good breakfast, he is starting to stretch out his milk feeds earlier in the day to 3.5-4 hours and it is making a big difference to how i feel - feel i have time in between feeds to do things. hopefully that will start happening soon for you

so anyway, i just wanted to wish you all the best, and let you know that you aren't the only one feeling like this, and also, most importantly, to remind you what a brilliant job you have been doing to breastfeed your daughter for 6 months. All her weight gain and development is because of you. Well done!

update: ds reached for my boob a few times (arching his back) but nothing major. refused the bottle but took about 1 oz or so from a cup. Not a lot but hope that will improve over the next week or so, he gets plenty the rest of the day.

he did attack his dinner (he is 8mo and on three meals a day) with a gusto not seen before and even had pud .

I think a cup is the way forward for me and he seems to prefer doidy cup. he only has proper use of one arm so he cannot hold it himself (apart from the no lid issue ), but he seems to like the fact that he can drink from it himself, rather than be fed.

thank you again for your messages - lovely to have reassurance :-)
i feel a lot calmer about it all now, think just admitting i was scared helps. madmouse, glad it went well, i'm really glad you posted to update me, it's made me see that i over react about things, of course it's only normal that a baby not used to drinking from bottle/cup/etc is not going to glug the whole lot, smack his lips and never want the breast again. i would have felt like a failure if dd had only drunk an ounce but of course that's me being paranoid. must relax.
only one question remains - what is a doidy cup? (sheepish emoticon)

this is a doidy cup. Looks mad but works well for independently minded babies, ie all those who have bf for a good few months as they are used to being in control of how much/how fast. You hold the cup, they sip.

although I offered my cheeky man a tommee tippy cup with lid at lunch time which he has always refused, and he grinned at me, put it in his mouth by pushing my hand in that direction and drank , so trying that with formula this afternoon.

must say he was very tired just now and it was hard to persuade him to nap without 'dummy' and he may not be impressed seeing a cup when he wakes up

thanks madmouse! hope you and ds still getting along well with cups.....got dd to nap yesterday without comfortsucking simply by lying her down and popping her own thumb in her mouth as she was screaming - she fell straght to sleep!! i was amazed. needless to say when i tried the same thing at 9pm last night she looked at me as if i was nuts and screamed! oh well, perseverance i suppose.....:-)