getting 16 month off the boob!

[Evasmummy]

Hi all, I need help and some hard advice! I am trying to get my dd 16months off the breast altogether for a few diff reasons. I wish i could go on feeding her but i have to stop. Anyway she still takes a lot of feeds especially during the night. she ahs a feed to get to sleep ( i know i know!!) and then wakes about 1 am and oftena gain at 4 and sometimes at 6ish. She ahs never slept through apart from last night after her 1 am feed when i forgot to turn the monitor back on and didnt hear her.... felt bad about that but good that i had first 4 hours in a row sleep ever!!

So i have spent a while getting her that she is calm at her night feed if she hasnt fallen asleep on the breast that i can put her in the cot and she will chat for a while and then fall over. She used to scream blue murder. So i really need now to work out a way that she is off the breast altogether. she never took a bottle so i cant give that to her if she did wake. do you think it is just a case of if she wakes being strong and soothing her without lifting her from cot? like sort of going cold turkey? that makes me feel bad !!! Honestly what am i like! I am going out for the night at the start of april so i would really love to have a good stab at this now so i will feel confident leaving her with my sister then knowing that she isnt screaming for me! Plus one other thing [roll eyes] she does not eat that mcuh food though maybe not surprising the number of feeds ! So i have tried tanking ehr up b4 bed time as she loves ready brek hoping this might fill her up, though she still wakes. reckon its just habit now? Sorry for going on and on!!! any advice much appreciated!!!!

Go cold turkey and get your dh to do all the soothing.

Ds sleeps in our bed and we did this a month or so ago (he is 16mo now). It was awful the first night (half an hour's screaming from ds with me having to turn my back on him), slightly less bad the second and fine the third. And I am sooo glad we did it .

16mo is deffo old enough to sleep without feeding during the night. Maybe offer water though. Her daytime appetite will catch up very quickly.

Thanks Carolinamoon! I tried last night with not lifting her when she woke as she had a good feed at 9pm and at 11pm. so when she woke at 1 2 and 4 i let her cry for a while. it wasnt really a hard cry more a little moan! After wee while went in to settle her just and lay her back down in cot. she cried for a minute or two then just rolled over!!! I am going to stick at it and try to get her off altogether, even the first bed time feed. she is not a milk drinker at all so do you think if i gave her a drink of water/juice and some ready brek b4 bed then that should be ok? or too much of a shock to her system just cutting out the milk altogether. I dont mind giving her the odd feed she likes during the day, but maybe if i do that, then that will confuse her even more and she wont know why she isnt getting it at night!! Im rambling again arnt i!!

wow, that's pretty good .

I think if you're giving her a snack and a drink before bed she isn't likely to get hungry during the night.

If you do want to stop bfing altogether, maybe it's easier to stop completely now? I've cut down to one side once a day (at bedtime) to try and get my periods back so we can ttc, but I've kept this feed mainly for the cuddles.

Ds now doesn't ask to be bfed at all during the day, having been a total boob monster until we did the cold turkey thing. He used to have quite a strong association between bfing and certain parts of the house (when I was sitting at the computer MNing for example ), so I thought occasional daytime feeds would have reinforced that and led him to expect more bfing. Maybe it would work ok with your dd though.

Im in the middle of getting my 14mnth old off the breast. A lactation consultant gave me the following advice which seems to be working (fingers crossed)

• drop one feed at a time
• change routines, and distract her. Im suprised, but it seems to be working.
• go out when you'd normally be at home
• play with them more and find special new activities for the moments in the day when you'd normally feed. I spend my life at a new playground we've discovered with special swings for very little ones
• give her more meals and snacks so she never gets really hungry

We seem to have dropped all the daytime ones and going to bed (her dad has started doing it), just leaving nighttime if she wakes up, and early in the morning. Am going to attack that in about a week...

I would agree with everything janerooty says but would just add: tire her out more during the day in the hope of a good sleep. I suppose this echoes what janerooty said about activities/playground etc. But just playing outside in the garden and running up and down, adding a walk etc helped our little problem along.