When did you stop responsive feeding (on demand)?

[Hope54321]

Hello ladies,

those who breastfed their babies, when did you stop feeding on demand?

Never did. I mean they are 15 and 19 now and don't breastfeed 😂 but I was always led my them. I think that's important because breastfeeding is about more than food.

Never, it would be weird to feed them when they weren’t hungry or withhold food if they were. They don’t constantly feed all the time forever. It becomes only every 3 hours or every 4 hours and once they are older, it’s more just part of the routine, when they wake and not again until bedtime because they eat solids during the day.

When they were about a year I put boundaries in place so that they couldn’t just have it on tap when we were out etc. we had more set feeding times by then e.g wake up, before and after naps, bedtime.

Depends what you mean exactly. I breastfed all my children til they self weaned and I never had set times for them to breastfeed, but when they were getting a bit older if they wanted to feed at a time or in a place that was inconvenient then I'd try distracting them or offer another snack first. So say they started crying for a feed in the supermarket at 3 months, I'd put them in the sling, feed them and carry on shopping, but that's a bit tricky and not really necessary with a 2 year old. I wouldn't have abandoned my shopping to breastfeed a toddler, so I'd try to distract them or give them a piece of fruit or something and tell them they could have milk when we got home.
So if you mean when did I have a structure for breastfeeds the answer is never, but if you mean when did I start to put some limits on where/when, it was gradual, probably from once they were eating a significant amount of solids and definitely once they were speaking. But it was always context dependent. I might have given my 2 year old who was really upset because they'd fallen off the slide in the park a quick comfort feed for example, but not if they were just whinging because they were a bit bored in the trolley in Tesco.

At one years old. Then they could have cows milk for nutrition, so I stopped feeding in the day at all. Fed on demand at night for a while longer, gradually restricting this until stopping completely at 17/18 months (same for each child).

Some babies do gradually self wean, mine were still wanting to feed all the time so I had to put boundaries in place for my own sanity!

Breastfeeding is about more than just food but there's also nothing wrong with offering different kinds of comfort if that works better for you.

With my third child I stopped demand feeding when she was older around 18 months or so, I always demand feed until at least 12 months and then I might try and schedule it a bit so I can do it when it's more convenient for instance I don't want to breastfeed an older baby in public to be honest so I used distraction until I was home, I'm currently breastfeeding my 3 month old and will likely do the same thing with her until she self weans which with my last one was nearly 3 years 😅

From about 8-9 months we were on a pretty fixed feeding schedule. It was part of my plan to have him completely weaned by 1 year, so after that I was able to drop feeds and work to that plan.

Worth mentioning that my son had long feeds, and took to solids extremely well.