Stopping BF

[bmthcoMP]

Advice please!

My little girl is 5 months old and I want to start the process of stopping breastfeeding at around 6 months.

I have leaked the whole time I’ve been breastfeeding (constantly have to wear thick breast pads which has driven me mad) so I’m planning on doing it gradually, maybe dropping a feed every 4 days or so.

Two questions, one, when will I stop leaking? I’d ideally like to be leak-free confused by end of June!! How long did it take your boobs to go back to the new normal? I was pretty flat chested before breastfeeding so it’s so I know at what stage they’ve settled down and whether I need to buy new bras ....! And also does this order of dropping feeds (v rough timings ...!) sound right :-

4pm feed

10am feed

Middle of night feed (anytime between 1am and 4am)

1pm feed (ideally I’d like the drop the 1pm feed before the night feed but not sure if that would work as thought I read somewhere that you need to space the feeds out that you’re dropping ...)

7am feed

7pm feed

Anyone :(

I think the current recommendation is to drop one feed every two weeks. This is to let baby get used to thecincreased volume of milk. A BF baby will take roughly 25 floz per 24 hours under 6 months whereas a ff baby will need roughly 2.5floz per pound of weight. It will also reduce your risk of mastitis and blocked ducts.

If you want to drop them any quicker, I’d give one of the Bfing Helplines a call and talk it through with a BFC.

As for the leaking, I think once you’ve stopped you’ll be ok, but again, you might need to run this passed a BFC

I think it took my boobs about 2 weeks to settle from dropping the last feed and I bought new bras a month or so after swapping.

I’m not sure what order you should drop feeds in or if it makes much difference. If you want to go out in the evening you could try dropping the 7pm and 10pm?

Thanks! May need to start a little earlier than planned if it’s going to take that long - would rather follow the advice if it’s a feed every two weeks because of my crazy supply! I had problems with blocked ducts in the early days of BF so definitely want to avoid that

Hi op I don’t really have advice although I’m in a similar boat. DD just turned 6 months and was breast fed apart from one bottle of formula around 10pm. Ive decided to start the weaning process, but with an aim to being done by 9 months.

Currently feeds approx 8, 10.30, 1, 4 and 6.30 with a bottle feed around 10pm and at least one other night feed around 3-5am. This week I’ve swapped the 1pm feed for a bottle as I figured it was spaced out and it’s a convenient time for me to give a bottle as I’m usually home. We just started solids too and she’s taking them well so that will probably lead to dropping a feed anyway in the next few weeks.

I think with my DS it was around a month after I completely finished breastfeeding him that I felt confident I was back to a stable boob size again

I replaced the lunchtime feed (1pm-ish) with a bottle and went from there. We were travelling at the time and DD was always a fussy feeder so it was useful not to have to BF in the middle of the day when we were out and about. I gave that a week then dropped the tea time feed (replacing with a bottle). The last feeds I kept were first thing in the morning and last thing before bed but I didn't have to drop those in the end - by the end of a month of mixed feeds, DD decided she preferred the bottle, completely refused a BF before bed - and that was it! Done!

Just a word of warning, BFing was ALWAYS a nuisance for me (see above - we'd also had two BFing strikes along the way) but I still felt sad about it ending (partly because I didn't have the final "say", she did!) So don't feel surprised if you go through a bit of a grieving process with it even if it's what you want - I bawled my eyes out in the shower one night and DH was because I had moaned about DD's ways for months!

That’s interesting @cluelessmummy. I’m the same. I’m not a fan of breastfeeding and DD has dropped down a percentile (although doc wasn’t worried). I worked really hard at the start due to low supply and breastfeeding issues I had with my first child and was determined I’d be more relaxed this time round about the whole process and if it didn’t work out then so be it. I still cried bucket loads when they told me I had to supplement as she wasn’t putting on weight. Definitely a hormonal component

Ahhh I think that will happen to me too @Cluelessmummy! I’ve actually started a list of all the ways I’m going to treat myself once we’ve stopped, hopefully that’ll help me a little ...!

I’d prefer to drop the lunchtime feed first really but I’m sure I read somewhere that you had to space out the feeds you dropped & wasn’t sure that would work in that case (as I want to keep morning and eve feeds until last it would then mean dropping the feed before or after lunchtime next ) - so I’d be dropped consecutive BF