Breastfeeding morning and night only

[Anonymous]

Baby is almost 7m and just started some formula. I am sick of pumping (was an exclusive pumper with my first) and just over it but don't want to drop my supply too much.

Can I just ease off and still be able to breastfeed morning and night? Would I be able to breastfeed over the weekend or times I am always with the baby?

Any tips or advice?

[Anonymous]

Sure. Just make sure that the majority of baby’s nutrition is from breast or formula. You can start to transition to solids as well so that the nutrition balance tips in favor of solids by 9 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Baby is almost 7m and just started some formula. I am sick of pumping (was an exclusive pumper with my first) and just over it but don't want to drop my supply too much.

Can I just ease off and still be able to breastfeed morning and night? Would I be able to breastfeed over the weekend or times I am always with the baby?

Any tips or advice?

It depends. Some people will be able to some wont. Its still relatively early in the normal 1 year period where breastmilk/formula is a substantial (if not majority) of caloric intake. Your supply may regulate or it may not. Just a note that when I did this at 15 months, I still had leaking for 2-4 weeks randomly during the day as my body adjusted to not pumping during the day and breastfeeding on demand on the weekends.

Just go into the decision making process by understanding that your supply may diminish and your breastfeeding wont sustain through no pumping during the workday. 7 months is especially early to try IMO.

[Anonymous]

I think this varies a lot by person. I know when I was weaning my first child, when I got down to just morning and evening nursing sessions I noticed a sudden and massive drop in supply. It was like my breasts just were deflated balloons. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to maintain extra nursing sessions at that point if I’d needed to.

[Anonymous]

Nope, anything less than 6-8x a day for me didn’t work. Totally dependent on your body, though my LC said it was more of the norm to be in my shoes.

[Anonymous]

It is hard to say. It might tank your supply. My mom claims she BF only in the evenings/nights and didn't pump while she was at school but I find that claim dubious.

[Anonymous]

When I dropped one pumping session at work, my supply was fine. When I dropped a second, my supply tanked and I essentially had to wean. (I had been doing three times - 9, noon, and 3 pm).

[Anonymous]

I was able to do morning and night only at 13M but still had to pump on trips because as the supply rebalanced I guess there was *a lot* morning and night— so build that into your calculations.

[Anonymous]

I did that for several months, then dropped to once a day for three more months.

[Anonymous]

When I was exclusively pumping, I lost about 1 oz a day each time I dropped a pump, from seven to four. So other pumps would increase in output a bit, almost enough to cover the drop.

At 4 pumps a day I was at about 17 oz a day. When I dropped to three that went down to 8oz a day. And when I dropped to two, I immediately dropped to less than 2oz a day of total output.

So no, that would not work for me.

[Anonymous]

It worked for me when I was also pumping once a day to keep up supply. Once I dropped all pumping, my supply tapered off and the baby needed formula/ cow’s milk in addition to the nursing feeding in the morning and before bed, so I was nursing plus bottle feeding and it started to get silly. He was sick a few times, so at home and nursing constantly brought my supply back, but shortly after I tapered off again. I just stopped completely last week at 13 months old. Started supplementing/tapering off at 11 months.