Stopping breastfeeding

[Emjayne96]

Hi!
I’m really struggling with stopping breastfeeding my 16 month old. He’s fine when I’m not here and when he’s at nursery (I work full time Monday-Friday) but as soon as I get home he’s pulling at my top, screaming, smacking me, until I eventually give in.
He doesn’t sleep through and wakes up a few times to comfort suck on me until he has fallen back asleep. He’s never had a dummy.
I’ve tried offering water/juice and he just launches it if I give it to him.
He eats perfectly fine so isn’t hungry and if he ever sleeps out he doesn’t need it.
I just don’t know what else I can do.

My DD breastfed till a fair bit older than this, but here’s the strategy we went for (she still has a morning feed even now unless she’s going to nursery)
Read stories about it first for a couple of weeks.
Do night weaning first, offering cuddles/rocking in place of feeds at night (this worked surprisingly well for us, no screaming, only whinged a bit for two days and then started mostly sleeping through)
Drop day feeds by explaining (lots of repetitive talking! Many times before you do it, rereading the stories lots) that mummy milk (or whatever you call it) is now just for bedtime/morning (or whatever you chose). When he asks for a feed give him a snack and a drink and lots of cuddles and try to distract. This was the stage we found had the most complaining.... resort to any form of distraction that works! It only takes a day or two to get past it but they are shit days.
We dropped bedtime feed by making a big change and explaining it as part of the change. DD got her “big girl bed” (still with a big safety rail) and didn’t mind that she no longer got a feed before bed as she now had DINOSAUR SHEETS!!! Take advantage of whatever your kid likes.

However, we haven’t dropped the last feed! So don’t have a strategy for that one.

This took us best part of a month to get this far, including the week where we weren’t actually weaning, but were reading lots of stories about it. The ones that DD seemed to understand best were:
Sally weans from night nursing
Nursies when the sun shines
Loving Comfort
Mummy milk is all gone
Honestly, I found reading stories about it with nice simple words and pictures helped sooooo much!

Will he drink cow's milk from a cup? Do you have a partner who can help? I stopped bf my youngest at 15 months. It initially wasn't really the plan. I thought I'd continue a bit longer, but he took to milk in a cup so well and then I developed some health issues (which meant that I really needed to give my body a break before I got any more ill) and it just sort of worked out that stopping wasn't a big deal. We got him used to milk in a cup. A straw cup has worked best for both of mine. Then I needed to go away for meetings with work, so I was away overnight for two nights (not consecutively, just 2 nights in the same month). Dh put him to bed and gave him a cup of milk. And it was fine. With me not around, he wasn't bothered and happily had his milk and slept all night!

Then we got in the habit of doing a bedtime cup of milk instead, but I would still feed him once during the night to get him back to sleep and in the morning if I was there (some days I leave very early for work). Once he was happy to have the bedtime cup of milk, it was relatively easy to slowly ease out of the other feeds. I started to feed him only every other day, and then every third day, etc. And then eventually I just stopped. It was establishing the new routine around what we did at bedtime that helped I think, and it was fortuitous that I just happened to not be around for a few nights and dh doing it helped to make the switch.