breast feeding

[purplejeanie]

My baby is 13 months old and I'm still breast feeding. I don't want to stop but want some flexibility so someone else can put him to bed other than me! He doesn't go to sleep on the breast but does always breast feed before going to bed at night and upon waking in morning. He refuses a bottle. My husband just tried to put him to bed and he refused bottle and screamed and screamed. Has anyone got ideas as to how I can encourage baby to be more flexible ?! He's gone to sleep now without breast or bottle so I'm bit worried he will wake in night hungry. Thanks all

I'd see how tonight goes first, maybe he'll sleep fine. I breastfed DD1 until she was over 2, but on nights when she was away from me from the age of 1, she just didn't have any milk of any kind before bed and it was fine.

As above. I'm tandem feeding a baby and a toddler and on the nights when I am physically not in the house, and toddler watches me say bye and go will just have water. When a baby, would sometimes accept expressed milk or just go without until the night feeds when I got home.

It definitely makes a difference if you're in the house too I think.

It has admittedly only been a couple of times, but my DH has done bedtime for our 14 month old who is normally breastfed to sleep. She absolutely will not take a bottle or milk in a sippy cup so on the nights he has done bedtime we/he make sure she gets a really decent dinner (it's not the night we try new things to eat), a bit of toast and fruit as a supper just before bedtime and then he settles her to sleep in his way, so cuddling rocking patting etc. She's actually slept through. She's desperate for a feed when I get her up but I don't think that is necessarily hunger.

Thanks! I'll see how the night goes and hopefully DH can work out a more relaxing bed time routine

Does you little one drink with a sippy cup during the day?
If so you could put some expressed breast milk into the cup and have dad give it too him, introduce it during the day if not and explain that this is what he will get at night time.
Another way is to gradually reduce the amount of time you spent breast feeding him before, so cut it down by 5 mins each night.
it’s really tough when all they want is mummy 🙈

My first gave up her bed time bottle at 13 months so he doesn't necessarily need anything. See how he goes and perhaps consider giving him a bigger dinner/supper if this is going to be a frequent thing.

We separated the last feed and sleep a bit - so feed, books, bed. It meant that either of us could do the books & bed part. Moving the "feed" to "not a breast feed" was harder, as DS1 definitely didn't get the same comfort from a bottle. In terms of actually getting milk into him we found the munchkin 360 ones the most successful.

They don't have to have milk before bed. See if tonight goes fine you might be pleasantly surprised.
We phased out the pre-bed BF by giving her a cup of milk with her dinner and if she didn't ask for BF before bed I didn't do it.

He woke at 5:10 this morning and I couldn't get him back to sleep. He does sometimes wake early so I don't know if it's linked to not having a feed last night but I think probably. He does drink from sippy cup during day so I'll try to give it to him with milk -and make bf not the last thing before bed and increase supper if I'm not feeding. He is very stubborn though -and knows what he wants!