Hi everybody, Melissa here.
Welcome to CloudMom!
This is a show about when you're going to stop nursing and weaning your baby.
Now the AAP, the American Academy of Pediatrics, recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six
months.
I've tried to go longer than this, but a lot of moms I know did less than this, did two
months, did three months, there's a whole range of lengths of time for which women choose
to nurse.
I think it is generally agreed that the most important time is at the very beginning.
And over time, especially once your baby is eating solids, they will start to get nutrition
from other sources.
They will start to get iron from fortified baby cereals, they will start to get other
nutrition from pureed meats and from vegetables so the importance of the breast milk does
somewhat decline overtime.
The main focus really is at the beginning.
And the longer you can do, people generally agree, the better.
Okay, when you are nursing if you start to feel as if it is no longer working for you,
it's stressful, you start to feel as if you're going to need to supplement more, this can
be a very sort of heart wrenching thing for moms.
I remember when I went back to work with my first baby and my milk supply was going down,
the amount of milk I had in the freezer was starting going down, and on the weekend I
remember just sort of standing there in the pharmacy staring at these cans of formula
and feeling really bad about it like feeling somehow I had sort of failed, like I hadn't
been able to give exclusive breast milk for long enough.
And I think this can be a really stressful and troubling time for moms.
Meanwhile there's the whole philosophical aspect of what's happening.
You can't just go from nursing four or five times a day to not nursing at all the next
day.
Also your baby can't go from getting the breast or just breast milk exclusively one day to
getting the bottle or pure formula the next.
So thinking back to the times when I had to make the switch from nursing to bottles or
from breast milk to formula, I've put together a little schedule here for you guys, I know
I'm the queen of schedules, in terms of how you can gradually wean yourself off of nursing
and get your baby used to the bottle or get your baby used to taking formula.
Now the American Academy of Pediatrics, again the gold standard, has a schedule, which I
find to be a bit quick, but here is the schedule in which they suggest for moms who are going
to stop nursing and babies who are going to start taking the bottle with formula.
They say that once your baby is comfortable with the bottle you can start to introduce
more bottles on a daily basis.
Use one bottle a day for two days, on the third day you can go to two bottles, and by
day five you can be up to three to four bottles.
For me this AAP guide is actually a little quick, I think that it's a little quick to
just stop nursing your baby in like 3 or 4 days.
I think babies might be able to get accustom to the bottle this quickly, but when it comes
to the mom and nursing, especially if you're like me and you have a very, very strong tendency
to develop mastitis or blocked ducts or whatever, you might have to do this over a much longer,
extended period of time.
So I've kind of put together a schedule for you guys which I think is more gradual.
So let's walk through this and hopefully it's something that can work for you when you decide
your going to stop nursing.
Okay, if you're on a four times a day feeding schedule this first thing I would do is I
would drop the 11am feeding because in the morning you're going to have a lot of milk
so you're probably going to want the baby to be sucking that out.
Okay, during the second week I would then drop the 3pm feeding.
By the third week, bye bye 7pm or final feed.
And by week 4 your first feed of the day then gets drop.
Okay, you might actually want this whole process of stopping to nurse to go on for a much more
extended period of time and this is very common.
This has been something that has really fascinated me.
I know a mom who went back to work and she fed her baby just morning and nights for over
6 months, just mornings and nights.
She cut out all the daytime feedings.
I know someone else who only fed her baby at night for like 6 months.
The baby had the bottles during the day and at night she fed her baby from the breast.
And her body adjusted so that only during the night was she producing milk for the baby.
I thought it was so interesting.
So your body can adjust and there are all sorts of ways to go on breast feeding just
because you decided that it's no longer convenient for you to give a bottle during the day, you
might be able to do it just do it at night.
So keep that in mind too.
So how are you going to get your baby used to the taste of formula if you've been giving
solely breast milk?
Well here's one gradual way to go about doing that.
I mixed one-quarter part formula with three quarter part breast milk for around two days.
On the third day, I would mix equal parts breast milk and formula.
And on the 4th day I would be up to about three quarter part formula and just a quarter
part breast milk.
And by the 6th or 7th day I would be giving the baby formula alone.
So when you follow a guide like this I think you're lessening the likelihood that your
baby is going to outright rejected the formula, which is something that's happened to me.
I gave it to my baby after he had only had breast milk and he was like "what is this?
I don't like this" It wasn't what he was used to.
Another thing that's really nice about it is if you do have some milk that's frozen
you can basically extend the time during which your baby gets the breast milk because if
you give only a quarter of the bottle, the breast milk, you can use the frozen breast
milk you have over a longer period of time.
Now keep in mind, and I keep reminding myself of this, when you take that breast milk out
of the freezer you only have 24 hours in which to use it.
So you want to use it during the course of that day.
But you can dole it out between a few bottles and it's a nice way to make sure your baby
getting some breast milk and extend the period of time during which your baby has breast
milk.
Anyway I hope these guidelines will help you wean yourself from the nursing and get your
baby used to taking the formula and thanks for tuning in!