Countdown to stopping BF

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My LO currently has approx 6 BF/day and is also doing v well with BLW. In exactly 3 months I am returning to work. This will be when my LO is approaching 1 year old - she's currently 8.5 months. I'll be working 3 full days a week and would like to continue BF in the early morning and last feed of the day. Is this possible and how do I get there from where we are now?

Are you offering water from a cup? And if so, how well does she manage it? And what about dairy, does she like cheese, cheese sauces, yoghurt, that kind of stuff?

I should add that she takes a small amount of water from a doidy cup with her meals, she can take a bottle but has rarely had to (once a month if that), and she doesn't at the moment have any formula. I also don't know what she should be drinking when she's a year old!

Trying to remember DD's transition - I went back to work properly when she was 8mths (did nearly three weeks when she was 6mths, then had summer holiday off). She initially took 12oz expressed milk to the CM but this quickly tailed off as I was finding it too hard to keep expressing, so dropped to 8oz and then 4oz and then nowt, which she was fine with. You may find that you can drop feeds gradually without it bothering her at all; 6 feeds a day is quite a lot I think at her age. I took DD down to three, morning, bedtime and when we got back from CM, then down to just morning and evening. She was always a brilliant eater though (and a bit of a fatty!) which made me feel confident about doing it.

There's no problem with switching to cow's milk once she's one. DD never had any formula; I carried on doing the morning and night time feed until she was 13mths but by then I was pregnant again and I think my milk pretty much dried up, so when we gave her the cup of milk she was so glad to get a drink she wasn't bothered where it came from!

I wouldn't worry about it too much. DS at 15mo feeds regularly (well some days not at all, other days lots and lots, depending on what we're doing and how he's feeling) when I'm around but since around 10mo has gone a whole day without BF without too much stress, and he never really took EBM from anything else.

If you're happy for her to feed when she likes when you're not at work then its highly likely she will be fine at nursery, and at nearly a year won't need any milk or formula if she's having some morning and night.

If you want to go down to the two feeds then follow other people's advice, but you don't have to drop daytime feeds completely if you're happy to keep going.

I would like to feed her for as long as possible, but I also want a gradual transition towards no daytime feeds (because I want to reduce the number of shocks to the system she has to deal with when she goes to the childminder). Things is, i don't know how long it will take to do the transition - should I start now (eg by consolidating feeds or introducing other drinks) or can I leave this til the week before I go back to work? Or something in between? FYI she is a good feeder and also quite porky, and I don't think expressing is going to be an option (nowhere private at work).

I don't think DS found it a shock - there was no mummy around (he was with auntie) so there was no milk because that's where it came from. He always ate more with his auntie than he did with me. If you can get someone else to take your DD away for the day a few times beforehand, you can see how well she copes without the nursery thing being an issue

He's just started nursery and definitely at his age I'm more of an issue than the milk - so far he hasn't asked for a feed until we've got home (sometimes via the supermarket etc)