Unfortunately, everything should be finished sooner or later. Thus, some time you will have to wean your precious baby from breastfeeding. How to make this process painless for both of you?

Let’s learn the idea…

Weaning can be called a complete refusal from breastfeeding, but, let’s arrange that we will call so not only a complete, but also partial switch to other kind on feeding. This will be correct, as a baby will have to switch over in each case.

How to understand it is time to wean

A baby’s coming-of-age is an individual process, and milestones on this road are rather relative. Moreover, this concerns a moment of weaning baby from breastfeeding. Here we almost have no rules and laws. Everyone relies on his own reasons. Some feel “it is the right time”, other moms orient on a baby’s coevals, and thirds want to recover their figure finally.

Today many podiatrists recommend breastfeeding a baby until you have milk. So try to pay less attention on other people’s words. Your own baby and his choice are your best guiding line. Some babies quit breastfeeding by themselves, but there are few of them.

According to WHO recommendations, the best variant for both mother and baby is breastfeeding until 1,5-2 years. During first 6 months a baby should be fed exceptionally with breast milk.

An extraordinary situation – a sudden disease and/or mother’s hospitalization – can become one of reasons for weaning breastfeeding. If a mother suffers from following diseases: suppurative mastitis, active form of tuberculosis, syphilis, other severe infections (scarlet fever, diphtheria), oncologic diseases, and also cardio-vascular, liver and kidney diseases in decompensation, when their structure and function are disturbed irreversibly, diabetes, - then she cannot breastfeed her baby, because she can pass dangerous substances to a baby with milk.

If a mother suffers from severe diseases, her organism accumulates toxins and/or pathogenic bacteria. Besides, as a rule, such diseases require strong medicine treatment, which can penetrate into breast milk and come to a baby’s organism. If a mother’s diseases is expected to be short-term, and a baby is under 1 year, and moreover under 6 months, there is a sense to keep on breastfeeding due to regular expression of breast milk.

How to dispose yourself to the process

First of all, you should be psychologically prepared. Regardless of your motives that induced you to quit breastfeeding accept this necessity as a fact. You should not feel sorry for “pure baby” deprived of a mom. A baby will feel each of your hesitations and this will only complicate and slow down the process of weaning. Psychologists and teachers know by experience that children, overcome any significant changes in life (weaning from breastfeeding, starting attending a kindergarten etc.) much better, if their parents are assured in the necessity if these changes. So, if you are still not assured of weaning from breastfeeding, you should better not try. You will just irritate your soul and make a baby sad.

Thus, firstly you should screw yourself up. Try to treat a baby not with compassion, but with understanding and respect. Yes, a “transitional period” can bring tears and whims, but do not treat them tragically. They always accompany important changes in a baby’s life and are not only signs of his suffering. Show you understand his feelings and share them, but do not let them push yourself around. Babies are terrible dodgers. You just should pay out once, and a baby will use this “breach” in a trice. So, take heart – and do not swap horses in midstream.

At one stroke or bit by bit?

Someone can make up his mind to quit breastfeeding at one go, offering formula to a baby instead. We should say many babies treat this switch quite calmly and show no discontent. Other will prefer reducing quantity of feedings bit by bit. On the one hand, this variant will give a baby chance to switch gradually, but on the other hand, it can turn to be more difficult for a baby. There is no simple answer here.

Probably, we can recommend you following: if a baby treats substitution of firstly one feeding highly, in 2-3 days – another one, then we can say a gradual variant suited you. Thus, you will reduce quantity of feedings to zero or bring them to appropriate quantity. If a baby treats each breast substitute painfully, you will have to resort to more resolute variant. It can cause great hue, but a period of adaptation will be finished quicker.

What instead?

Weaning from breastfeeding means a switch to other kind of feeding. Which food should be a substitute for maternal milk? Everything depends on a baby’s age, on the one hand, and his health, on the other. If a baby is under 6 months, only adapted formula for healthy babies and special medicinal – for babies with various problems – are the only substitutes. After 6 months, if a baby is healthy, you can switch to partially adapted or, what is even better, adapted formula for babies from 6 to 12 months.
After 8 months, if there are no contraindications and negative reactions, you can include acidophil formula in a baby’s diet. As a rule, babies drink it willingly, but still it is not recommended giving more than half food allowance to acidophil products: children kidneys feel difficulty leading out sour metabolic products.
On any stage of breastfeeding period there is a formula: half feeding is fresh (adapted formula), other half is acidophil. You can alternate formulas both in the process of each feeding (in the beginning of feeding, when a baby is hungry, offer him the one he likes less, by the end of feeding – the one he prefers) and during a day. After 8-9 months you can include whole cow’s milk in a baby’s allowance, of course, if he has no allergy on it. A baby under 7-8 months will most likely prefer switching to a bottle, older kids can learn drinking from a drinking bowl or even cup at once.

Little ruses

1. If a baby treats your attempt to offer him a bottle negatively, ask someone of your close people feeding a baby instead of you. It is quite possible that a baby will treat this better, being in some other person’s hands. This also concerns night’s feedings, if you do not plan keeping them. Moreover, associations with sleep are usually more stable and deviation from them can be treated more seriously. Ask a baby’s father or grandmother coming to him: a baby will agree drinking formula from a bottle more willingly without sensing your smell.

2. To introduce a new taste of formula to a baby, you can firstly treat him using a spoon.

3. Place of feeding is very important for some babies. It is quite possible, that in the atmosphere associated with breastfeeding he will treat a bottle more willingly.

4. If a baby requires breast hard and refuses from a bottle, nothing will help you, excepting your own persistence. Use cunning. Give him a chance to refuse this time, but when he becomes hungry again, he will most likely accept a “mom’s substitute” better.

5. This moment a baby needs your kind attitude and tender like never before: he needs to make sure that he is weaned only from breast, not mother in general. For example, in the night, when your baby starts crying, trying to make you giving up your own bans, you can lull him in your arms, walking along a room with him and sing a lullaby, even if usually you do not lull him. A stage is considered new because it requires refusal from old rules. You can try switching a baby’s attention to some other thing: show him flash-lights behind the window.

6. Weaning a baby who receives breast only in the evening and night, is identical to other weaning (see p. 1 and 5), i.e. it is better, if some other person comes to a baby with bottle in the night. If a baby keeps on refusing, show patience, trying to distract a baby’s attention with something.

7. If a baby is already 1 year old and older, there is probably no sense in night’s formula feedings. If you made up your mind to wean him from breastfeeding finally, then it is also better teaching him sleeping during whole night without break-ups for snakes. In this age night feedings are not already necessary from physiological point of view, this is rather a habit connected with stereotypes of sleep and falling asleep. If during breastfeeding they have at least psychological sense, then while refusal from breastfeeding it is advisably weaning a baby from them completely, this way he will learn sleeping during whole night and will eat more actively during a day.

Some words about mother

When you wean a baby from breastfeeding, your own organism also needs time to switch over and stop producing milk. It is almost impossible to forecast the way this period passes for you. There is some dependence: the fewer problems a mother had during beginning of breastfeeding, i.e., the better her individual physiological mechanisms are, the easier a process if weaning will be.

If you decided to use gradual weaning, your mammary glands will be getting used to reduction of “load” also gradually and start slowing down the process of milk production. Breast will be strained during first time. Try to find the golden mean: on the one hand, increase of pressure in adenomeres slows down further milk production most efficiently, on the other hand, you still should avoid serious breast engorgement. Use expression of breast milk little by little to prevent strong discomfort. However, if milk will be expressed completely, organism will treat it as a signal for its further production. Some moms prefer giving breast to a baby, if they feel strain and pain in it. Of course, this helps, but remember, in this case you choose a “kickback” voluntarily and will have to start the process from the very beginning again.

You can start taking diuretics. They should be “soft”: kidney tea or weight loss tea. Some especially zealous women start taking laxative. It is difficult to judge their efficiency, but if you have too much milk, you can try. Such remedies also should be “soft”: foe example, same weight loss tea or various vegetable remedies.
If you wean a baby “at one go”, your organism will experience harder conditions. In this case you can face some problems (it does not mean they are complicated and insoluble), but the whole process of lactation extinction will take much less time.

How to arrange the process while urgent weaning?

In this situation a woman has a question, what to do with milk? We already wrote that if you are going continuing breastfeeding after your recovery, you can just express milk. But if you do not plan to return to breastfeeding, then you should suppress lactation.

Here are some considerations and recommendations:

1. Try to stick to a drinking schedule, like during first days after childbirth, i.e. drink no more than 500-700 ml liquid a day, including first courses and juicy fruits. It may seem difficult, but do not worry: after childbirth you wanted drinking a lot, now everything is different.

2. Attitude to breast tightening is quite discrepant today. Those who use this recommendation are usually satisfied, but specialists consider this procedure harmful: sometimes it leads to galactostasis and mastitis.

3. Doctor can prescribe you a medicine that supresse lactation – Bromocriptine (or Parlodel). It stops adenohypophysis hormone prolactin production, and mammary glands lose “guiding thread”.

Same recommendations can be used while planned weaning from breastfeeding.

Be patient and good luck!

When you should not wean a baby from breastfeeding?

Do not wean a baby during difficult for him (illness, communication with a nanny, potty training) and you periods (attendance, move, change of family status). If you can foresee some event that will become a reason for breastfeeding refusal, it is better to wean a baby beforehand.

Mother’s acute infections (acute respiratory viral infection, light and middle food poisoning, herpes displays etc.) are not contra-indications for breastfeeding, if they are treated only with vegetable or external use only medicines. If you are prescribed internal medicines and while complicated treatment of any acute diseases you should definitely consult your doctor as for safety of breastfeeding process.

While droplet infections, you should take control: four-layer gauze bandage.