Wean from breast

[Mummymitch]

My 11 month old is keeping me on my toes, I've read book after book about weaning from breast and I've tried everything! He is very stubborn.... He eats all 3 meals and snacks in between he's fine during the day without breast but night time is a disaster, he wakes around 6-7 times per night for breast I'm unsure where I'm going wrong with this? Any advice I'd be extremely great full, he also won't drink from a bottle sippy cup nothing....

They do still need to BF in the day or have formula at 11 months OP. Really I'd be feeding roughly 3 times in the day or giving 450 ml of formula.

Once he's 12 months, you can try Night Weaning

My health visitor said not to force him to feed during the day if he doesn't want to but never to refuse him a feed. I think he's simply full enough from food, I make sure he gets enough calcium with his meals and he does feed once in the morning before his breakfast and once before bed.

The only way I managed to do it at night was by sending DH in instead of going in myself, he settled much quicker with rocking with DH whereas if I went in and didn’t feed him he went crazy. After a few weeks of this then I could take over (afraid he did still wake in the night but not as much) he was a bit older though maybe 14 months

Sorry yes, you can't force him to feed in the day but I think you may have done reverse cycling going on

Would you feel better about continuing with BFing if the night feeds were greatly reduced?

We gradually increased the time in between feeds at night for ds1 and taught him to go to sleep by himself. So at the beginning he was feeding every 1 to 2 hours(!), I set my target at 1 hrs 30mins. Any sooner and I would rock him in my lap until he either fell asleep or time was up. After a few days I increased the time by 15 minutes. I kept increasing the time by 15 minutes until he was sleeping through. I always offered a feed at morning and night and got him to have a feed at nap time. If he fell asleep and then woke up again I would guess he actually was hungry so would feed him but this rarely happened. We persevered with sippy cups and free flow tomee tipee cups in the day. Usually at meal times.

It's the night feeds that are killing me now I wouldn't care if he was feeding on me every hour during the day I'm just so tired. He won't go half hour without wanting another feed, he slept through from day 1 which was amazing but also why I think I'm struggling now with him almost been 1 my 2 other children was opposite terrible sleepers to start with then got better as they got older.

I think about night weaning then. Have a read if the article I posted further up and see what you think 🙂

It seems from your posts that's it's not BFing that's getting you down, it's him wanting to do it at night instead of on the day

Sleep deprivation is a form of torture and really effected me. I would walk into door frames, cut myself when making tea and I lost my ability to make decisions. The gradual withdrawal method really did work for me. It took a while but was the best thing I did. I got the method from a book called ‘teach your child to sleep’ I had read many books in desperation and it was by far the best. It has flow charts and step by step instructions which my sleep deprived brain needed. My lovely Ds1 is nearly a teenager now, takes himself to bed and has to be woken in the morning! It will get better....