Easiest way to wean

[Anonymous]

I breastfeed for the first few weeks (with formula and pumped milk in bottles as a supplement), and then it's 100% formula. After pregnancy and birth, I am just ready to get my body back to normal. I don't want to feel wet and hormonal anymore.

Both my kids were decent sleepers. No idea if there's a correlation.

Pregnant with no. 3 and was sort of thinking I'd try to breastfeed more this time, but this thread has freaked me out and made me think maybe formula is the way to go.

[Anonymous]

Combo feeding with a mix of breast milk and formula made it so easy for me. She was fine with breast milk or formula from a bottle or breastfeeding from the start. Allowed me to breastfeed as I wanted and not obsess about pumping.

[Anonymous]

All kids are different, you can easily have a very different experience.

In my experience the stubbornness over 3 kids of toddlerhood starts around 18 months. Age 12-18 months is the sweet spot to wean. Even if you don't wean, you should cut way back to like 3x a day, none in the middle of the night at that age. At that age the breast should be a top up, not the main source of nutrition.

There is nothing wrong with aggressively sleep training an older baby. Mom is a human too and needs sleep too. If you need an additional incentive, my eldest, also a crappy sleeper who got a boob in his mouth all night, had cavities at his first dental appointment a few months shy of 2 years. He got very little sugar, zero juice, I am 100% sure it was due to constant BFing

Dad has to step up for night weaning. Mom needs to physically leave the house. Crying hurts mom more than dad, women are just wired differently. You can also try a different venue. The change of scenery can help break the habit

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i'm mostly hearing not a weaning issue but a sleep training issue-- mine never nursed to sleep beyond the first couple months.. did the Eat, awake, sleep, you thing...

and then around 7 months did sleep training which (i wrote earlier) meant bumping with bottles during day so when she cried at night i could feel less guilt that it wasn't her wanting boob for hunger but wanting boob for comfort. i literally had to hide in our unfinished basement and have my husband do it because it was too painful.

he literally nick named her "boobie" which we still call her at 2 because she only wanted my boobs for comfort for so long.

i'm pregnant with number 2 and have similar question as the pp who has some regret about breastfeeding. mine never nursed outside of home and then i exclusively pumped 7+ times a day so could basically never leave the house or do anything for the first year. i'm thrilled she got breast milk but can't decide if i'll sacrifice that again (and frankly mostly not sure how it'll be possible with a toddler who also will need me)

#2 has a way of knowing they are #2 and they are less demanding

My first almost killed me with his neediness

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I 100% understand- mine literally didn't sleep at all for first 7 months at night and would scream all night if not on boob ( I wrote above that we nick named her boobie). Our pediatrician told us to try ferber at 4 months and was giant fail. The big thing was loading her up with lots of milk during day ( eg bottles of pumped milk). I believe this is the 12 hours by 12 weeks method too. I feel guilty bc I think I made my kid overly big ( she struggled on growth chart for many months with frequent weight checks and after was super heavy). I assume this is why formula kids sleep better too- they typically have larger portions during day then you'd get at boob.

Thinking of those nights where mine didn't sleep for months still brings me trauma and I definitely wanted to divorce my husband during that time

I’m sorry this happened to you too. No one believes you sleep training can fail. These threads attract all the parents of easy babies who want to glibly tell you how easy it all was and how weak and incompetent you are. I am not weak. I’d like to see anyone else survive 2.5 years of being woken up 10-40 times a night.

I’m the PP whose kids nursed forever, and who were crappy sleepers as babies and now as older children. I agree with this 100 percent. We sleep trained the oldest one with Ferber and she screamed and cried til she puked and almost choked on it. The whole, they eventually wind down and learn to self-soothe literally never happened for this child. She would get more, and more, and more upset until she was absolutely hysterical and screaming her head off. We lived in a condo building and had neighbors who complained about the crying and it just did not work for her. She has anxiety now as an older kid and still needs a parent and can’t self-soothe to sleep. It’s horrible.

With the second one I was determined to get them to be a good sleeper so we did Taking Cara Babies religiously. I had them sleeping 11-12 hours at one point and thought we had finally figured it out! But then they learned to roll and we had to stop swaddling and my life went to hell. The child would wake up 27-29 minutes after falling asleep every single time - nap, bedtime, etc. I could set a clock by it, and the only way we could get this kid to sleep was by holding them, so it was even worse than the older one.

None of this made sense to me at the time - other parents reported getting sleep, their kids sleep training well, their kids weaning at a year easily, etc. and I felt like I was on Mars and was just the world’s worst mother. Well, my kids are older now and both now have special needs diagnoses. When I met other special needs parents, they all had similar experiences with their neurodivergent children with issues with difficult births, nursing, sleeping, etc. I guess this is common. But of course, it doesn’t make sense until later.

I will say, that having older kids who have never slept well has resulted in a level of sleep deprivation that had really morphed my personality and my husband’s. It’s been so bad for our marriage, and had I known how bad it was going to continue to be, I wish we would have done formula always (because kids do sleep better with formula - breastmilk gets burned off quickly and they have to eat more often and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) and hired a professional sleep trainer to help us do it.

That's crazy town. With kids that bad, you need to hire two trainers who can trade nights, mom and dad need to leave and sleep in a hotel.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much to those with the terrible nursers and sleepers like mine as well as those of you for whom it went better. I learned a lot.

I think we’re going to 1. Combo feed from birth again 2. Try to aggressively do Taking Cara Babies eat/play/sleep 3. Switch off with dad in the bed routine from the beginning (I didn’t know to do that last time) and 4. Quit night an evening nursing altogether before the 4 month sleep regression. We also hired a night doula for 6 months this time and told her our sob story with our first, and she’s willing to aggressively sleep train if it comes to it.

But I don’t think I’m going to 100% formula feed from the start. We’ll try the stuff above and see how it goes. Really hoping all of you are right that my second won’t be as insane and crushingly hard as my first.