Its been 19 months now and I need help to get him off the boob ! HELP

[Mum2Romone]

My son has just turned 19 months and is still breastfed.
I love breastfeeding him but I feel that he is too big and I try not to breastfeed of a day anymore (therefore also in public) I feel he's too big. he looks about 2yrs old and after a few comments , I have started to notice myself that it is certainly time to wean him.

He drinks fine from a cup and does so most of the day

The problem is : I have gotten down to just a night feed. But its to put him to sleep.
Not just a feed before bed IYKWIM He dalls asleep on the breast and then I put him to bed.

When I started doing this I didnt realise I would have so much trouble later on putting him to sleep.
Please help me with any advice you feel may help

I want him weaned over the next month or so? What do you think?

[skeetaboat]

Do you feel that you really want to wean him or is it more because you've felt pressure from others? Because there's nothing wrong with feeding to sleep (no matter what age), if it works for you. If you are really keen to wean though, that's a different story.

We replaced feeding to sleep with stories in bed before going to sleep. It took a lot of perseverence but it all paid off in the end. I found I had to offer something very enticing in order to have DS accept the new arrangements happily. Good luck!

[Mum2Romone]

At first (over a month ago) I was ****ed at other peoples comments
We were in bali and being alot hotter my son was feeding more often and I was fine with that

But after returning home (its freezing) and my boy looks so grown up these days I really feel as though its time, besides I need to be able to get him to sleep in his own bed (and not wake wanting the breast in the night) which he still does..... my hubby and I are looking at expanding our family and dont have any time "ALONE" lol

[MantaRay]

Hun, if this is what you want, then good luck with it. The World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding until at least 2 years of age for health reasons so please don't believe anyone who says he's too big. He's not, unless you really are ready.

19 months is still on the youngish side, but he might be able to understand things like "you are a big boy. Big boys drink from a cup. Drinking from mummy has to stop now". You can also do this gradually by reducing the time of feeds and explaining why, or limiting the number of sucks - "you can have 10 sucks today" then the next day it's 9 etc. These ideas can work well on an older child. Another one as a last resort my be putting a bandaid on your breast and saying "too sore".

GL hun. Follow your heart and wish you all the best.

[RoyaUK]

It sounds like there's a couple of concerns for you here. Feeding a toddler and then feeding to sleep. From my experience it is possible to stop the feeding to sleep without stopping feeding my child completely.

With DD1 around the same sort of age, i asked DH to come home early & help with bedtime every night for a week as follows: i breastfed DD1 around 30 mins before going down to sleep then she would have a drink of water and then go into the bedroom with DH. He would cuddle her or sit in the rocking chair and stay with her and comfort her until she went to sleep. There was resistance of course for a few days but by the end of the week she was happy to be put down to bed by DH and then i was able to settle her in the same way and eventually to us popping her into bed, twinkle twinkle song and closing the door to her snores! BTW we made sure she wasn't teething or ill or anything before we started.

This helped to stop the 'feeding to sleep' pattern for us. There is also a lot of great advice in the No Cry Sleep Solution book by Elizabeth Pantley which is also popular. I went on to feed her till she was 2.5 yrs and then she stopped.

Oh, and it's quite possible to expand the family whilst breastfeeding - i've had 2 more babies since!! To be honest DTD doesn't take that long any more........!!

good luck