Hello....have been exclusively breastfeeding since birth and have 7 month old who LOVES BLW and her food and has taken to it like a charm. So well in fact that she's drastically reduced her milk in the last week -- to the point where I woke up yesterday and had NO MILK!!! I am annoyed at myself for not cottoning on to this until now as I should have noticed over the past week but hey ho.
From what I have read this drastic reduction does not usually occur until later but the BLW literature (Rapley) says to trust your baby and she will take what she needs and when. I really want to do that but it can't be the case that she needs 0 milk at 7 months! Or can it?
I am not worried she's hungry and all else normal/happy but I am worried about a) losing my milk and having to stop ebf b) she's missing out on the benefits of breast milk too early on that even the best BLW diet can't provide.
So I reduced her food yesterday slightly and went about the business of establishing the milk - laid in bed all day doing skin to skin and letting her suck whenever she wanted. She did quite a bit of sucking which means she's wanting the milk/interested in breeding. We did the same throughout the night and she had a full nappy this AM and my milk is (very) slowly coming back.
I am going to do the same thing today to get the milk back in but I am slightly annoyed/worried as although I feel it's important not to lose the milk, I think it will have two undesirable knock on effects - 1) disrupt her excellent BLW progress. And 2) disrupt her nights when she has been previously doing 1030-600. Am more worried about 1 than 2. I am torn between thinking I need to take a step back to move forward and thinking sod it, she knows what she needs just let her drink and eat whatever she wants.
Sorry for long post, have not had much sleep!
Interested to hear reassurance/support for either plan and similar experience of early dropping of milk.
Thanks!