DS1 -
Jack self-weaned at 14 months when I was pg with DS2. While I was devastated that our bfing experience ended so quickly, I am glad that he chose the time.

We had a rough start to bfing - he was born with a tongue-tie and was unable to attach at all. After long days of trying to feed a screaming, hungry baby, getting conflicting advice, expressing and giving him a bottle, washing bottle and expressing again, walking milk to the fridge, coming back and trying to feed screaming, hungry baby etc etc, they allowed me to stay in hossy for an extra night to try and get bfing working, and thankfully on that last night, night 5, he attached using nipple shields. That night I also felt like I'd been hit by a bus, and when Jack woke for a feed in the night I was shivering. My right bb was red but the midwife said it didn't look like mastisis. I was discharged and later that night ended up with a fever over 39. This was the first of two bouts of mastitis in the first 3 weeks.

When he was 2 weeks old, we finally discovered that the tongue-tie was the problem. A week later it was snipped and Jack immediately latched on. It took another 3 weeks to totally wean him from the nipple shields.

Following that, I went through weeks of pain, cracked nipples, crying during feeds often. Then that settled and we had the odd period of breast refusal and intermittently sore nipples again. The next hurdle was returning to work when Jack was 7 months - full time at first but after a month I reduced down to 4 days a week. With a lot of advice from the ABA (and their great booklets), I was able to continue bfing with Jack drinking only EBM and water until 12 months. At 11 months I fell pg and Jack started reducing his feeds one by one until self-weaning at 14 months.

DS2 -
This time it was a much easier start to bfing. Despite being nearly 4 weeks early, Tom was able to attach straight away. I didn't have the same problems with pain this time around either. Our major hurdles were an entire weekend of breast refusal, my return to work at 8 months and an occassional spell where DH thought that bfing was causing some of Tom's problems and that I should give up. But we got past all that and have now been bfing for 18 months. We are down to one feed a day now (except this week when he was sick and wanted an extra feed - and boy was DH glad that I'd continued bfing ), and I think he will self-wean soon. I am hoping to make it to 2yrs, but I will cope if he finishes earlier.