Weaning 18m old, will I regret it

[DesertRome5]

Still breastfeeding 18 month old. I persevered because of CMPA but he has a good diet and I'm ready to get my body back. However...it's a very, very useful tool to put him to sleep, soothe him and calm him down. In 2 months' time, DH has to go away for work for 3 months so I'll be on my own. DH is great at calming DS and is the only other person who can put DS to sleep (no boob needed if dad is doing bedtime!).

So I'm reluctant to stop BF for this reason, I have some hard months ahead, am I making my life harder? I'm imagining spending hours every day trying to convince him to nap/go to bed. Whereas the boob does that in 30 seconds!!

I read BF keeps your estrogen low so it's not great for energy levels, moods, and diet, I'd like to feel like myself again. For anyone who stopped extended BF, did you feel better?

Personally I would start weaning and getting DS used to self soothing without needing the boob and implement gentle sleep training methods to help make nap and bed time easier. 5/6 months is a long time to continue if you are starting to feel like you want to stop and get your body back, and it will be much much much easier while your DH is there. It will also likely help with the resentment you may start to feel while your DH is away.

By 18 months my DS was have a bottle downstairs, and then we were doing a 10 minute bedtime cuddle and songs before leaving him to fall asleep independently. This took time to work towards, and I could not have done it without DH. It walso means that we can put him to bed and even if he isn't quite sleepy yet, he will play/chat until he is ready to sleep and we can still get our evenings back - a godsend when I am on my own and have parented all day.

That being said, each to their own and if you are happy to breastfeed for the next 6 months to make your life easier, do it!

Still going at 2.5. Glad we got this far and down to only 2 feeds a day. I’m hoping to be down to zero by 3!

@lmjmg I just don't see how I could sleep train. Putting him down to cry his eyes out doesn't seem right, he's too young. I have read lots of the blogs and books around "gentle" sleep training but they're all ultimately the same and involve crying and separation and I think it's harsh. I might be dumb here but what exactly did you do, if it didn't involve leaving them to cry in the dark?

We did it gradually and it looked something like this:

• Cuddle/rock to sleep and then put DS down
• Start putting DS down awake, using the same phrase over and over to say goodnight, and keep touching him till he fell asleep
• Remove the hand but repeat the phrase and stay next to the cot
• Keep repeating the phrase but stand at the end of the cot
• Eventually DS got the message and we could say goodnight and leave the room

There was very limited crying involved, more so when we started putting down awake but he would calm once he realised our hand was still there and the crying/whining lasted 2 minutes. By the time we removed the hand step, there was no crying.

Now, if DS does cry (which is rare) during bedtime, we just do the cuddle part before placing him down for longer and this seems to work - he still goes down awake and puts himself to sleep, he just needs a longer cuddle before this.

Not all sleep training needs to involve crying and you can tailor any of the 'methods' to suit you and it has the added benefit of encouraging them to put themselves back to sleep if they wake in the middle of the night. It was absolutely life changing for us, reduced a lot of anxiety that had built up around bedtime and also makes evening plans easier - we can both go out to do hobbies without worrying about how the other is coping with bedtime or grandparents can come down to baby sit as they literally just need to watch the monitor after we have down bedtime.

We have also used the hatch/dream egg to help - brighter red light and lullaby for bedtime routine. Once in bed, soft white noise and dim red light (so DS can see his teddies, room is not pitch black and the red supposedly helps with melatonin production) and then the light goes white at wake up time and that's when we go and get him up. It's all set to a schedule but we can override it if needed - or switch to white earlier than planned. And in the mornings if he was crying to get up, we would never ever go in without switching the light to white. So now, DS will wait calmly in his bed until it goes white at 7am, even is he wakes up around 6. He chats, sings, plays with teddies and sometimes goes back to sleep

And final thing, we never sleep trained naps as they were either at home and we could cuddle in our bed to sleep and I would read my book or we were out and about and they were a pram/car nap. Never seemed to impact night sleep cuddling to sleep in our bed as it was a different room, so we just rolled with it

I still BF my DS now and he’s nearly 2. He’s my third but I didn’t manage to BF my first two for longer than a few weeks (lots of reasons). I am going down the route of “never offer, never refuse”. I never offer to feed him but I never say no if he tells me he wants it. We’re down to a very quick feed just before bed (that he doesn’t need when DH puts him down) and occasionally one first thing in the morning. He’s been a bottle refuser forever but will accept water (in a normal kids bottle not a baby bottle) so DH will do bedtime with water to hand.

The issue I find is that me sitting in DS’s chair in his room triggers him to ask for a feed. Not sure how to overcome that but I am happy to feed him until he naturally weens himself.

So I'm by no means an expert (my baby is one, and very hit-and-miss with sleep) but this is what I do:

Bath/teeth/PJ's/story, then plonk her down in her crib. Lights off and I sit quietly next to her. Sometimes she babbles to herself and kicks her feet and quickly falls asleep. If she starts yelling/crying I give her a stroke. If she gets louder, she comes out of the crib and gets cuddled until she calms down or falls asleep. I don't let her cry and I try not to be too rigid - some days it's easier for her to fall asleep than others.

You’ll know when the time is right. I would advise don’t wean too suddenly if you can help it, the drop in hormones after breastfeeding are no joke. I felt so low for quite a while even though we did it gradually. It took me ages to figure out why!

When I stopped breastfeeding I introduced a comforter, my daughter had never bothered with one as a baby but we sort of swapped boob & cuddles for comforter & cuddles, I wore the comforter in my top for awhile on an evening so it smelled like me!

You may find he just stops of his own accord.

I was fully prepared to keep going, but one day, when DC was about 20 months, he pulled up my top as usual when we got home from nursery, looked at my boob, then looked me straight in the eye with an expression that conveyed something between pity and embarrassment, and pulled down my top again. And that was that!

He did have a dummy though and kept using that for bedtimes until he was about 3.

Would you try a bottle and weaning?

Dont introduce a bottle at this age

only you know if it’s the right time. Do you still feed in the day? I cut day feeds for mine a couple of months ago (shes now 16 months), was fairly easy and felt much more achievable for me. I get her down for her nap with a cuddle. Now do a bedtime feed and usually feed around 4/5am.

I weaned my little one a week or two before she turned 3. By 2 I'd had enough as she was still feeding on demand at home and I felt touched out. I decided to go slow but put boundaries in place, so she could have milk on demand until breakfast, then none until nap time, then bedtime. She was still having it overnight too. I cut out the naptime feed and she started eating more lunch. Overnight I started by reducing it down to shorter feeds, then would offer it every other time she woke and wanted it, offering cuddles instead. She started sleeping better too which was a bonus.
The hardest one was the morning feed but we started offering a wake up snack before breakfast. Took about a year and it felt a lot easier on my body as I didn't get many sideffects as some people get from stopping quickly.
As for sleep training, we never left her alone to cry. She stopped feeding to sleep unless she was ill or really tired at bedtime around that age and wanted cuddles or a hand hold instead which meant her dad became favourite for bedtime.