How to stop breastfeeding

[HarrysMummy17]

Hi, I'm hoping to stop breastfeed my son who has just turned 2.

He only feeds when he's tired and is now in that routine. He'll feed to sleep every night and if he wakes he wants to suckle.

I'm at the point where I want to stop. I can't leave my DS with my dp at night as I have to put him to bed, this limits any social things or work I can do.

I've tried leaving him to cry, giving him cuddles, giving him his comfort you but he'll scream for ages until he gets a boob!

Any tips on what to do?

We cut out night feeds with ds2 when he was 2. I too planned to give up completely, but hadn't worked out how. Then I was ill, and so dh went into ds2 at night and said "It's sleepy time now. Time to go to sleep. Milk in the morning."

The tough bit - DS2 was furious! He understood completely and screamed and screamed. With one short break - he fell asleep momentarily - he bellowed for seven hours!!!! If I hadn't had a raging temperature and felt iller than I ever had I would have caved in, but dh stayed with him, played soothing music and saw the night out. The next night it was 20 minutes and the next night he whimpered once.

I believe that most toddlers don't last that long. It was tough, but I knew that he was safe, with dh, wasn't ill, or thirsty and in the morning, he fed as normal and was absolutely fine. Dh and I, of course, felt awful, but the next night we all slept so well that we felt it had been worth it. He went onto nurse in the daytime for another 18 months, and if he ever asked to feed after he went to bed, we would just repeat those words over and over - Time to sleep. Milk in the morning.

HTH

Have you seen the Jay Gordon method? There have been previous threads about it drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html I'm in the same situation with my DD, at the moment my frustration is slightly outweighed by my laziness so I haven't tried anything yet

I recently stopped BF 17mo DS. Were down to just night time with sippy cups in the morning. I introduced a sippy cup (on my lap with a cuddle) as well as BF but cut down the time of the BF for a couple of weeks then told him that tomorrow would be no mummy milk and stuck to it. Amazingly it was quite calm. Unlike the day we swapped the morning BF for a cup ....