11 month old weaning from BF

[Vaun]

First of all, HOW?

He feeds first thing - 7am
Breakfast at about 8am
Then to sleep for his first nap at 9am
Lunch at 12pm
Then to sleep for his second nap at 2pm
Dinner at 5pm
Then to sleep at bedtime at 7:30pm

Am I building this up to be huge in my head? Where do I start? What nap routine do you do not involving breastfeeding? How do you get your child to sleep without feeding to sleep?

I feel like I could get him to sleep with other associations like patting, singing, but he just stands up in his cot and protests. So it would take a REALLY long time. Maybe I just need to relax with the routine and bite the bullet. It needs to be done after all.

At 6 months old I was able to put him down and he’d fall asleep from awake after a good feeding. But since he’s been more mobile/separation anxiety has kicked at about 8 months I’ve not been able to do that once!

What do I do?

Really can't remember the nap thing but I know that they were napping on the days I was at work with no BF so it is possible.

You could try dropping the first BF by just giving breakfast at 7am. My DH helped with this by taking LO straight downstairs for breakfast whilst I had a shower.

I’m interested to see what advise others have too as wanting to stop bf feeding my 11 month old but the sleep issue is stopping me. I’ve gone back to work now so stopped by feeding him in the day. But had to go for long walks or drives to nap. I like you also got him to go sleep drowsy but awake n if he did cry would nod off in a couple of mins but hard now as if it’s still awake he’ll just sit himself up in the cot.

So I’ve started back at work myself only 2 days. I did a bit of research and had a chat with the HV and I now feed him FOR sleep, we have a good feed and then I put my boob away when his sucking changes and he’s no longer actually feeding. Then I pat shush and cuddle him until he falls asleep. The first few days were quite hard because of his crying and resistance but I felt better because I was there supporting him.

I know that isn’t easy if you’re working a lot but I figured it was a habit that I can maintain even when breastfeeding does trail off and it reduces that association with feeding TO sleep and just feeding FOR sleep because who doesn’t sleep better with a full tummy?

I’m still at a bit of a loss about what to re-replacing feeds though.. do I just swap to cows milk gradually in a free flow cup? It’s so confusing because I don’t like the idea of swapping out breast for bottle whilst I’m here as it seems a bit counter productive?

For now we are just working on not associating naps/bedtime with falling right to sleep on the boob. Just lying down with me because anyone can do that with him! I then transfer him to the cot after 10 minutes. I’m going to start working on getting him to sleep in the cot when we’ve nailed falling asleep without the boob.