Harrison is my third baby. He is 9 1/2 months old and he has only had breast milk (rather than formula). He's a good eater now and he has also started drinking water in the daytime so his demand for milk is less. I weaned my first child completely at 10 months and my second at 5 months (so I could return to work). I tried to introduce the bottle to Harrison a couple of times around the 6-7 month stage but he wasn't having any of it. I've left it for a while and continued to feed. He particularly likes to feed overnight and would end up sleeping in our bed for the second half of the night and wake every 1-2 hours for more milk.I've been planning to sort out this situation for a while and felt that moving on to the bottle would hopefully be the best solution to his sleep, but I thought I'd wait a bit as we're off on a camping trip at the weekend. But, when Harrison bit me really hard when he was feeding, I decided enough was enough and went off to make a bottle for him. He refused it, but I persevered throughout the day and to my great surprise by the afternoon he was happily drinking it, he went down at night with a bottle, and after a feed late evening and one more at 1am (which my husband did!!!) he then slept in his own cot until 6.30am! That is one of the longest sleeps of his life, and of mine since he was born.
So we're nearing the end of day two. Harrison seems fine, but I'm a mess. I didn't fully think through the consequences to my body of going 'cold turkey'. As my other children were weaned more gradually there wasn't really any pain, but with this situation my breasts have turned into giant rocks and are seriously sore. I tried expressing a bit of milk but I think it was too late and not much would come out. I'm hoping the pain will ease soon and that it'll all sort itself out. I've been reading about all the remedies (think cabbages) but just having a bit of paracetemol.
In some ways I'm glad of the physical discomfort because it is distracting me from the emotional pain. I didn't know that the early morning feed yesterday would be my last time nursing a lovely baby. I wasn't prepared to let go of that bonding experience and allow my baby to grow up. In many ways I'll be glad to see the back of breastfeeding, but it still feels like the end of an era.
Oddly the cabbage thing works. Sorry to hear you're in pain.
ReplyDeleteGoing through an interesting thought process with this at the moment. Leif is 15 months and is still feeding 2 or 3 times a day, even though most of his food is solids. I enjoy the closeness and the cuddle time. I don't enjoy the occasional headbut, or as is currently popular, having him launch himself from a standing position at me as I'm lying down, and trying to faceplant himself onto the nipple as he goes. No idea where he got that idea.
Reading up on breastfeeding past 12 months, I've seen some comments about how unattractive it is to have a child ask to be breast fed, and that if they're old enough to ask for it, they should be weaned. The counter intuitiveness of that - that you wait just long enough for your child to be able to express a want/need, and then deny them, is just staggering to me.
My theory is that when Leif is ready, he'll stop. If we have another child before he's ready, well that's a different bridge to cross. Until then I think it's something I'm going to keep doing, and now that he can ask for it, albeit mostly with a huge cheesy grin and saying "DEEEEEE!", perhaps the key is teaching him that sometimes the answer is going to be "no", and he has to live with that.
I can see why weaning is considered the easier option :)
x Jhael
Dear Jhael, thanks for sharing your experiences. I really don't think there's a right or wrong time to stop feeding - it's a decision you reach when the time is right. Good luck with it!!
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