any advice on slowly giving up bf for 1yo before going back to work

[angelaspangela]

Am finding it very upsetting saying no to lots of tshirt pulling/breast patting....

Previously she wasn't that bothered about bf but after a run of co-sleeping and lots of night feeding (holiday, illness, then another holiday) she is now asking for milk all the time. Am trying to knock out the 2 day time feeds (just keeping early morning and bedtime) before I go back to work in a month.

NCT suggested just keeping all feeds and expressing at work but I don't feel up to that. Or distracting her but that doesn't work. SO upsetting as coinciding with some gentle-ish sleep training.

Any advice?

Afaik some women just omit the feeds on work days, and then on days off let the child continue to feed as usual. Might that be an option?

Ime the milk supply had settled down and reduced considerable by the time my dds were a year old, and personally if I worked regular hours I would probably have tried this.

Incidentally due to my really unpredictable shifts/night work etc (I am a nurse) I gave up all bf apart from the early morning one. On the odd occasion dd had to miss that if I was called out but it didn't make a difference to the ongoing feeding.

Will she accept some sort of fluids (water, cows milk or whatever) from your childcarer?

personally, if you're happy to keep feeding her then i'd just carry on as usual.
when you go back to work she just won't feed during your work hours. it'll be fine

DS is 16mo and goes through phases of asking for milk more often, and others where he only has morning, bedtime and one night feed. He's done this since before he was 1. He's at nursery a day and a half each week (8-5 on the full day) while I work and being without milk doesn't seem to bother him (he doesn't even ask for milk straight away when I pick him up, but waits till we get home and I am conveniently sitting down, then remembers what a good idea it is!)

Unless you really want to drop the BF entirely, your DD will almost certainly cope with you going to work and not feeding her during the day, and continuing to BF when you do have her will help her to deal with being apart from you during the day. No need to express unless you are uncomfortable. Your body will soon adjust so you probably won't need to express for long.

HTH

i'm in the same boat and just went cold turkey on the two (or more) day feeds, two weeks ago. DS (10 months) normally has one bottle in the afternoon now in addition to the morning and nighttime BF, though if he is being super fussy in the late morning I'll give him another bottle then too.

He sometimes tugs at my shirt but the bottle or a little snack seems to do the trick to distract him.

He's going to the childminder in 4 weeks so I wanted to make sure we were on the new schedule well before that.

I thought i might get engorged but none of that at all. Likely we will drop to only the bed time feed when I do go back to work, as long as we can keep it going.

He did have a cold this week and I gave him a couple extra feeds during the day.

good luck!