Hi All,
my lo is 12.5 months and we have weaned down to one breastfeed per day now, I started actively doing it at about 11 months.
Anyway I can help with some of you questions.. can someone help me with mine too??
Calums Mums, Shoan & Lashwish::
First of all I was really stressed about the idea of weaning as LO loves his "boob" but it is much much easiler than you think. We were on 3 breasfeeds per day at 11 months.. sometimes 4 ( on a whinging day). I researched with the early childhood centre on whether 3 breastfeeds would need to be replaced with 3 cups of milk. And the answer is no, they don't even have to drink any milk at all!! As long as they are getting anough calcium per day.. which would be 1x 3cm cube of cheese and 3/4 cup of yoghurt, and a serve of spinach or broccoli.
Also, I have found now that he is more mobile.. running, walking, he is too busy for breastfeeding during the day.. he is also getting too busy for cuddles. So when your LO gets' busier you wil find it is sooo much easier. This is what I was told my alot of Mums also. There is a natural window for weaning.
Also, I used to feed to sleep sometimes for naps and bedtime, when he was 10 or 11 months this was the case. So I made sure that I stopped doing that gradually, just brought the breastfeed further and further away from the nap time. I started by giving the breast just 5 mins before bed and adding in a cuddle after the breastfeed finished. After a week of that I added in a book. Eventually he learned to go down "awake". He did cry and cry demanding it for a few weeks, but I would just cuddle him till he was calm and say "no boob, just cuddles" over and over, and then place him in the cot. Basically one day I just said in my head - no more feeding to sleep. And that was that. but it wasn't so hard because he already was an independent sleeper, I just fell into old habits for a while. I did not attempt to drop from 3 feeds a day until I had sorted out the feeding to sleep.
SO what I did was this:
1. Cut all breasfeeding down to strictly 3 per day before breakfast, after lunch and 15 mins before bed. I used to feed just before bed.. and sometimes a 4th feed in afternoon. I changed the dinner feed to 15 mins before and put brush teeth and stories after that (in preparation for replacing BF with a cup of milk).
2. Dropped one feed at a time. Lunchtime feed first. This feed actually toook me 3 weeks to properly drop as he was teething and very irritable for about 4 weeks, so he kept demanding it. But once he was over the teething he sort of forgot about the lunch time feed. I introduced about 100mL of milk from a cup about 1 hour after lunch as an afternoon tea thing.
3. After 2 weeks on 2 feeds a day we dropped the morning feed. Got up before him (yuck, before 6am) got dressed and told him that today we have breakfast first. I started naming all his favourite breakfast foods - saying "we'll eat kiwi fruit & bannana" today. We went straight into breakfast. After breakfast I thought he might "demand" the breastfeed but he was too busy and went about his business playing with his toys!! Now this has been the same way for 7 days.. not once has he asked for the morning breastfeed. I did not add nother cup of milk to his routine. He just has milk on his cereal.
4. Now the night time feed. We are currently doing bath, breastfeed, brush teeth and then story time with dad and dad puts him to sleep. We are planning to replace the breastfeed with a cup of milk from Dad. I'm not ready to yet. I will wait till the time feels right.
We will then drop the cup of milk at night after a few weeks, but we've decided to offer one at first to help the transition.
Has has anyone got any tips for dropping the night feed, the final one??