How well did your child handle stopping breastfeeding?
Hi,my name is Anne,I did the following:
Q&A: How well did your child handle stopping breastfeeding?
Mine will be a year in three weeks she’s getting teeth and sometimes she bites down hard while breastfeeding and won’t let go. So I was planning on stopping anyways at a year. But when I stopped after she was biting she threw the biggest fit, I mean it was scary, she screamed until she couldn’t breath and was gagging! Which was about twenty minutes. So in the end I gave in. But I’m scared she wont’ sleep at night with out breastfeeding as that is how she is put to sleep and if she wakes during the night she sucks for a while.
ANSWER:
Answer by Jillian ~*Cohen’s mummy*~
i let my son wean himself with a little encouragement. Neither of us really noticed that much. it was so gradual. at about 18 months he satrted to go days without nursing and he weaned at almost 2 years 5 months but since aout 18 montsh it wasn’t often hee would nurse. there are ways to get them to stop biting ya know. the weaning process went so great for both of us i wouldn’t change it for anything
Answer by Mary F Sunshine
I worried about issues related to nursing and sleep too so I nipped them in the bud already. (Mine is 8.5 months.)
With bedtime, we moved nursing up in the routine. I nurse her, then hand her off to my husband who bathes and then reads to her. From the first night we did this, she went to sleep with little to no noise.
As for the night time nursing, I decided it wasn’t a good idea for us. I did it two or three nights when her first teeth came in. Thought, no big deal, right? The next week, she was up 4 or 5 nights, and by the third week, she was up wanting to nurse basically every night. This was after months of sleeping 10 hours straight!
We made the choice to let her cry it out the next couple of nights. By the third night we started this, she was back to sleeping straight through. Since then, she has survived two more teeth and a respiratory infection while sleeping straight through the night.
Basically, if you want to stop the night nursing, you have to make the behavioral changes to stop it.
Answer by Jan M
make it gradual, do the don’t offer never deny approach and she will start to reduce her feeding on her own, after her birthday you can start offering her a cup or bottle of milk or a snack at times when you know she will be asking to nurse don’t offer her the breast at night wait and see if she will demand it, if she does then let her nurse, but you will likely find that if you are not offering she will nurse less often, your milk supply will start to go down and over time she will lose interest. when left to wean them selves a lot of babies will wean between 18 and 24 months.
Answer by Kel
Right now I am weaning my 10 month old because I am going back to work and he is drinking formula. We are down to one nursing a day but in order to get started we had to establish how many times a day he actually nursed because at 8 months I was just nursing whenever he wanted it.
I figured out that he nursed 5 times a day
Wake up
1st Nap
2nd Nap
Dinner
Bedtime
Then I cut out one nursing a week, starting with the least stressful time, now we are down to just morning nursing, he really likes cuddling in the morning
When you cut out a feeding from the beast make sure you cuddle with your daughter while she is drinking milk/formula that you replace with that nursing. It is difficult in the first two weeks and the last week. Once you have decided she is completely weaned there may be some times when she really wants it and as long as you control it it is normal to continue spurratic nursing for 3 weeks after stopping everyday
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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