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Starting to wean from the breast - how?

1 reply

delilah89 · 25/09/2013 11:05

DD (11 months) is still breastfed on demand. She has 3 meals a day of which she eats a little, and has water and a taste of cow's milk, but has never taken a bottle and doesn't really drink milk from a sippy cup either.

I had planned to wean her off the breast at 1-ish, but now realise I'm not sure how to start. BM is her main food and she loves it. I'd like to get her down to one or two feeds a day with cow's milk and food and yogurt and water making up the other feeds.

Any advice appreciated.

OP posts:
Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Eletheomel · 25/09/2013 11:26

Not much useful advice for you, as I wanted DS1 to self-wean but just to say I went back to work when DS1 was just over 12 months old, morning only, but it meant that he went from still feeding quite regularly do not having any milk in the morning (I left for work at 6:45am and he'd be asleep) until 1:30pm in the afternoon (when I'd get him home). This change in routine didn't bother him at all, he happily dropped those feeds and made up when I picked him up.

Once he was 12 months old, we'd introduce cows milk in a cup and he'd drink it if I wasn't there and there was no booby milk (so I could go out at night and he'd take a cup of milk off DH no problems).

After a while he dropped the afternoon feed for a few weeks, then wanted it back again (but I was happy that it was dropped!) so I'd just offer him a cup of milk or distract him and that generally worked.

I think if you want to start dropping feeds, focus on one feed first and try and do something different at that time, take her somewhere, the park, get exciting new toys out, offer her a food snack and cup of milk, keep her away from anything with bmilk associations (e.g. if you feed her on the sofa, keep away from the sofa). Once you manage to 'crack' one feed, you can then focus on the next one you want to drop.

The bedtime feed was the last one to go for me, but as I said I wanted him to self-wean as much as possible, and by the end, my milk supply was so low that he would have a bfeed at night then ask for a cup of milk, and after a month or two of this, he accepted (he was just over 2) that there wasn't enough mummy milk left and he just started asking for the cup.

She might not be taking a cup of milk now, but try someone else (your partner etc) trying her with a cup at a normal bmilk time, and you can hide somewhere close and see how it goes - you'll likely find she'll adapt to taking it from others easier than from you initially.

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