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Weaning toddler from breast

Hi,



I am still BF my DD (nearly 17 months) twice a day, morning and night. I am planning on stopping at around 18 months and just wondered if anyone has been through it and has any advice?



I'm pretty sure stopping the morning feed will be fine - I plan to get straight up with her rather than bring her into our bed and I don't think she will ask for it. I will offer her a beaker of cows milk instead.



Bedtime I think will be really hard. Although I got her to stop falling asleep on the boob at bedtime at 7 months she started again after she turned 1 when we had lots of sleeping probs. Now she doesn't always use it to fall asleep but it is a major part of going to bed, and she rarely falls asleep in her bed, usually on me.



Before I stop BF I plan to get her falling asleep in her bed again but I'm not sure how to go about introducing a bedtime routine that doesn't involve booby at all!



Any help appreciated!

Replies

  • Luke is nearly 17 months and I have only stopped bf him in the day in the past week this was because he would be on off all day all, so just feed morning and a little at night now, the only way I think is cold turkey offer another drink in a beaker cows milk if lol will take it.
  • Hi, I bf my dd till she was 26mths - and I really struggled to wean her off the breast, she loved it, it was her comfort thing, and we did use it as part of the bedtime routine.



    I had a few tries at cutting out one feed at a time, but she wasn't having any of it! So in the end we went cold turkey and I just told her it was 'all gone' - she was old enough to understand thankfully. We had a few tears and tantrums - but I just stuck with the milky all gone line, offered her a beaker of milk and she recovered pretty quickly. At bedtime we replaced it with a beaker of warm milk and a cuddle. I think I got dh to do this the first few nights, just to take some of the stress out of it and she got used to it pretty quickly.



    A good idea is to take her shopping to choose her own bedtime milk cup as well.



    Good luck x
  • My son was weaned a little after the 18mth mark too and we were down to morning and night feeds only too and a lot of his was comfort and habit. I honestly dreaded weaning him as I thought he would cause such a fuss and it would make bedtime impossible, but all that worrying was for nothing, he settled down like a pro after just a few days of quiet complaining.



    We did what you did for the morning, just got up and got going and offered a different drink, water for our son, he won't drink any type of milk (even now at 28mths). Bedtime was a bit tougher (but more for me than him i think!) but it does work and sometimes it's not as bad you'd imagined!
  • Thanks for the replies!



    My plan is to drop the morning feed when she turns 17 months in a few days then spend a bit of time getting her to fall asleep in the cot before I take away the bedtime feed.



    Hoping it isn't too traumatic for either of us!
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