Advice on partial weaning before returning to work

[Verso]

I'm due to go back to work on 3 November, and my nursery have asked me to specify what times DD has her formula (sic) and how much. As she is 99.99% breastfed (v occasional bottles of formula) it's very difficult to answer this question!

(She will be starting nursery a lot earlier than my return to work, partly to allow a settling-in period but also because the nursery manager refused to allow me to move the start date. Hmph.)

As I am going back four days a week and don't see my employer giving me time to express milk (don't get me started) I have decided I need to start cutting back on the BF.

I really really don't want to give up completely, though. Has anyone else managed to cut back to morning and evening feeds, and if so, how long did it take and how did you go about it? A friend of mine got me really worried yesterday because she said since she started weaning four weeks ago she has felt like she has permanent PMT!

verso I expressed at work when I went back with my first two who were both about 4 mths.
But in the end I stopped expressing and feeding during the day and it was fine, just fed morning and evening.
You will just be doing what I did a bit earlier I guess (how old is dd?)
If you start dropping feeds gradually and offering a bottle eg start with afternoon feed of whatever, you shoudl find milk production drops without pain.
(having said that, some people do find that once they drop any feeds (eg when weaning on to solids) the whole thing gives up. Hope that?s not you)
Good luck.

Thanks for your speedy reply! DD is 5 months now and will be six months when I'm back at work, so by then we should be well into solids too (just starting to dabble at the moment, so I suppose the 99.99% comment was, strictly speaking, slightly inaccurate). Just realised that means I'm trying to do two things here - cut down the BF and also add solids... aargh...

Hi
My son is 5 months and am due to go back (see redundancy thread!) and have managed to introduce bottles during the day. Struggled to find a formula that he liked but Aptamil worked in the end. He has taken to it fine and found my boobs adjusted fine too.
Good luck...

OMG, Corrin. Just read your thread {{{hugs}}} I just don't know what to say, except that I'm glad you've taken legal advice.

I will try to start introducing some bottles during the day. Did you do one feed at a time, or just make a rule that during the day was formula? How long did you take to adjust things?

Did one bottle at a time.

Started with the 6pm feed (so it wasn't me doing it), made sure I was out of eye/ear shot. Once he was taking it fine I then tried to give it to him (didn't bat an eyelid!). Then I started to introduce 1 more bottle at a time each week. Found that way my boobs didn't complain too much and I was able to keep feeding in the night (nightmare he still wakes) and kept the feeds I liked doing.

Verso, don?t say aarrghh, you might well find that the 2 go hand in hand iyswim.
Yes, milk is still a vital souerce of nutrition up to 1 yr, but I certainly found the babies had less interest in it once they started eating solids and so it was easier to scale the feeds back. By the time mine were six months (certainly with ds2, my most recent ) they were on three meals a day and only a bedtime milk feed on top iirc.
Don?t panic about all this (just read yr other thread and sorry you are worried), it will be fine, dd will be totally fine.

Thanks, Clary. Just stressing a bit now the 'honeymoon' maternity period is coming to an end, I think. (Had a horrible start to my mat leave and it's only really been in the last couple of months that I've been totally enjoying it.)

Deep breaths! calm...calm...calm...

I must agree with Clary. My DD was exclusively breastfed until 5.5 months, wouldn't take a bottle of EBM/Formula. I began to stress about going back to work over the bottle problem until my HV said that as long as she had plenty of dairy during the day, morning and evening feeds would be fine.

I've been back at work for 3 weeks and so far it's going well. We started the 'nursery routine', swapping solids for BF during the day, only 2 weeks before DD started nursery. Boobs seemed to adjust within a couple of days.

All going well I am planning to feed her until 1yr unless she gives it up first.

Hope this helps