For me, breastfeeding was a great enjoyment with my little one. But, there came a time where I knew that I was done with breastfeeding. Feeding every 2 hours for the better of 18 months was A LOT of work, and took ALOT of time.
Here is how I accomplished Mother led weaning without breast engorgement, pain of any sort, or mastitis.
- I set a date that I wanted to be done by. For me it was my Birthday, I knew when I turned 31 I wanted to be done (I was really tired of my hair being pulled out!!!). I then looked at the calendar, this gave me about 2 1/2 months to gradually accomplish weaning.
- I slowly started taking away the feeding times that were easiest. For us, the easiest happened to be morning time. My little enjoys breakfast so I would just distract her with breakfast right away in the morning and was able to get rid of the morning feed rather quickly and easily.
- About a week later I gradually took away another feeding. This was anything that led up to nap time. again DISTRACTION is key. We used lots of snacks and just kept busy around the house.
- From here we continued to cut out feedings until we had bedtime feedings left. We did substitute Milk at nap time to help with that transition. We did not use bottles, just sippy cups. I felt that allowing a bottle would keep breastfeeding at the fore front a little longer so I just eliminated them completely.
- The last feeding, which was the hardest to get rid of was bedtime. However, I stuck to my guns and in about 2 weeks we were fully weaned from all breastfeeding. In return bedtime became so much easier, we didn’t have to rock our little for 30-40 min just to get her to sleep, she would just go to her crib and put herself to sleep.
One other thing I did not allow was sippy cups/bottles in the crib.
This helped us with self-soothing so that in the middle of the night if our little woke, she would put herself back to sleep. When our little was a baby we went from having THE WORST sleeper to THE BEST sleeper once she hit 19 months and I was done breastfeeding.
Overall our transition was better then I could have imagined. I think part of that its because I was determined to be done, so I could be a better Mom in that season of motherhood.
I hope this helps some moms out there who are just done with breastfeeding! Sometimes you have to do what’s best for you and what will help you be a better mom. That is OK!
Health and Happiness
SV
