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Weaning Questions
So I am only pumping once at work and nursing MJ first thing in the morning and just before bed. He gets his bottle in the afternoon or nurses in the afternoon on the weekends. I'm not really ready to give up the morning and night yet, but I'm all set with pumping.
Question 1: if I stop pumping at work, will I still make enough milk to nurse mornings/ night?
Question 2: what do you feed your baby first thing/ last at night?
He wakes up anywhere between 5-6 a.m. and then usually nurses and goes back to sleep for a bit. Then he eats around 8:30. What is your baby/ toddlers first meal of the day, and is it at home or daycare? He gets to daycare around 7:45 in the morning. I have no idea where to start with this, definitely not time in current morning routine for a full feeding, but don't want him starving until daycare, either. How did you make the "switch?"
I'm planning to keep going until the middle/ end of April probably ween completely during vacation week, so whatever the transition, I have time to make it slow. Just trying to figure out where all the pieces fall in. Any tips/ suggestios are appreciated!!
Re: Weaning Questions
That's the same sequence that weaning Owen took. I stopped pumping/nursing during the day in March and we just dropped that feeding. (By then he'd been eating three meals a day for a couple of months; we also added an afternoon snack.) It didn't affect my supply at all; I still nursed in the AM and pumped in the PM while MH gave him a bottle. A few weeks later I decided to start to cut the evening out by gradually replacing the breast milk with whole milk (first an ounce, then a couple ounces, then eventually a bottle of nothing but whole milk). Once that feeding was gone my supply started to diminish for the morning feeding and a couple of weeks later we were done with that, too.
Like MJ, Owen's morning nursing session was around 5:30am or so and then he'd go back to sleep. Once my supply went down and he wasn't really getting anything, he weaned himself. For a week or so he'd still wake up and be brought to our bed, but he'd just fall back asleep. After about a week we worked on re-settling him in his crib instead, and within a couple of weeks he stopped waking at all at that time. Because of that, I don't think the morning nursing session had much to do with hunger -- it was more comfort/habit. I don't think he'll starve if he doesn't eat until 8:30. That said, you could always give him a snack trap of cheerios or puffs to munch on in the car on his way to daycare.
Good luck! Hopefully he'll lead the process and take a lot of the guesswork out of it.
Thanks girls!! He hasn't showed any signs of weaning, so I'm wondering if he will anytime soon! I need to be completely done by May (having another surgery and don't want to deal with pumping and general anesthetic again...) so will try to figure it out by then! I might email my pedi to ask about his thoughts on whole milk, I think starting that a little sooner might not be a bad idea.
Thanks for the tips, much appreciated!!