r/weaningsupport

I am anticipating many trips in the coming months due to my career, as well as a week-long personal trip without the baby. I have done a lot of reflecting and I've decided to start a slow weaning process. He is about to be 13 months in a few days. I would like to have him fully weaned by 16 months, when I am going away for a week-long trip. I am a just-enougher, and pumping enough milk for even just one full day of feeds is an incredible amount of time and effort for me - it's incredibly discouraging. A single trip away requires planning and literal weeks of pumping at night after baby goes to bed to produce extra bags of milk. Pumping has taken a toll on my mental health and it's just so draining. It feels like a chore and I dread every single pump session. It is no longer sustainable for me. It has become a big source of stress in my life. When I am home with baby I breastfeed. However it has been a few months now that he is slowly losing interest in breastfeeding and he will keep sessions short or skip them altogether. I feel like I am failing him by weaning. I know the recommendation is to go to 24 months but with my reality it just isn't easily feasible. I still feel like I am letting him down. I see lots of posts on this subreddit of moms breastfeeding until past 2 or 3 years old. I feel like such a failure that I can't do that too. And I am scared of going into this next phase of motherhood of no breastfeeding to rely on during hard times, sleepless nights and tantrums.

I’ve read many posts, but everyone seem to consider weaning when baby is older. Just curious: has anyone decided to wean after 6 months because EBF was no longer necessary?

I am interested in ordering from KeepsakeMom. I’ve checked out a bunch of these breast milk jewelry companies, and theirs are the designs I like best. I’ve been seeing mixed reviews though. Some people really like them, but I noticed a string of complaints a few months ago about lost orders or bad communication.

 

I really want to order, but I’m hoping to hear from some people who maybe have ordered from them more recently. Did you run into any issues? Just trying to figure out if these are long term problems, or if they’ve been fixed.

We have been gradually preparing to night wean and last night was the first big no milk at all night weaning night for my 18 month old. She did great, just one big upset moment really. Then today… she’s sick with a fever and an upset stomach. But eating and drinking ok and she just threw up once. Do we charge ahead? See how it goes? I hate to not give her that comfort when she’s sick but it feels like there’s never a good time. If there was concern for dehydration I wouldn’t go forward but as it stands she seems just sick with a typical daycare virus.

Anyone experience this?

Those that are weaning/in the process of weaning, how are you soothing to sleep at nap time? My 20 mo son is basically weaned, but I cannot for the life of me get him to sleep at nap time during the day without milk. He is very high energy, and will run around until he knocks out at 5 PM from exhaustion if he doesn’t nap. We’re not fans of CIO, and actually tried it before to no avail- he’s too stubborn for it 😅. Any help is appreciated!

I'm trying to wean my daughter (likely neurodivergent). She is down to no naps, only has milk before bed and occasionally in the middle of the night if she is having teething pain. I'm able to put her back to sleep in the middle of the night without milk as long as she has some sleep inertia.

She doesn't seem too emotionally attached to the breast milk and doesn't usually ask for it it's mostly out of sight out of mind. She does associated with sleep sometimes and refuses it if she doesn't want to go to bed.

She hates sleep and it always trying to fight it. She's on a floor bed in her own room that she moved into a few weeks ago and I'm still sleeping in there with her at night.

I've tried keeping her in the bed but she gets up wanders looks for books in the room tries to leave the room. She's able to turn almost anything into a distraction. If I try to prevent her from leaving the bed she gets hysterical and cries. I've tried waiting it out in hopes that she just tires herself out and goes to sleep but rather than tie herself out and getting into the bed or sleeping on the floor she will just leave the room.

I'm also worried that when I let her try and sleep on her own she gets progressively more tired and more manic and then it becomes even less likely that she'll fall asleep on her own.

I haven't been able to do more than one or two days in a row of attempting to wean because of these issues. Am I part of the problem? Do I just need to keep doing it consistently and eventually she'll stop trying to distract herself and allow herself to sleep? How long did it take for your toddlers to learn to sleep on their own without milk the first few nights? How many hours?

She is able to fall asleep in the car so we have used that on occasion.

My next step is to remove all the toys and books from her room so that she doesn't have anything she can distract herself with. Bring a cup of warm milk up with me in hopes that it will help her to calm down but then I run into the issue of teeth brushing as she's already brushed her teeth and if I brush her teeth after the warm milk it kind of defeats the purpose of her using that warm milk to power down.

The issue here doesn't seem to be her wanting milk or her asking for milk or her being emotionally attached to the milk but rather just not knowing how to fall asleep without it.

My almost 13 month old wakes up multiple times during the night to comfort nurse (every 1-3 hours). Im exhausted and so ready to wean her but i still want to feed her at least once or twice during the day. I want support figuring out how to go about with it. She is nursed + rocked to sleep and then just nursed back to sleep for the subsequent wakeup. She is a FOMO baby so just nursing or just rocking is not enough for her to fall asleep. Id like to continue to do so to put her to sleep and then offer water and then just rock for any nightly wakeups. Does this sound like a good plan? Or should i go cold turkey and stick it out? Im so nervous about the sleepless nights because im already so exhausted. I just need any reassurance i can get 😭