Weaning Off The Boob
This post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and purchase an item as a result, I may receive a small commission (at no cost to you). See my disclosure policy for details.
Please note: I am not a doctor and I am not giving medical advice. Information on this website is not intended to diagnose or treat any form of any disease or medical condition. This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only.
My goal was to breastfeed at least a year, but beyond that, I didn't really have much of a plan.
Breastfeeding is supremely convenient. I used the magic of the boob for everything. Baby's hungry? Boob. Baby's teething or uncomfortable? Boob. Baby needs to go to sleep? Boob. Baby wakes up in the middle of the night? Boob.
And it's not like you have to overly stress about bringing enough snacks with you everywhere you go. The boobs are conveniently attached to you and are continuously producing more food.
To top things off, the little one would never turn the boob down, so it's not like I had to worry about bringing a variety of foods in case he wasn't in the mood. He was ALWAYS in the mood for milk.
For all of the convenience, there wasn't much of a downside, for me. Aside from the first week or so of adjusting to breastfeeding (which was intensely uncomfortable, but very worth it), the only other real complaint I had was that my little dude would wake up three or four times a night to nurse. It wasn't the worst thing, and I got kind of used to being a pancake. We co-slept, so I would flop over onto my side, barely waking, shove my boob in his face, and fall back asleep before he was even done sometimes. Then when he'd wake up a couple hours later, I'd flop over onto my other side, shove the other boob in his face and go right back to sleep. (Discovering the side-lying position for nursing was truly a game-changer.)
Perhaps I wasn't getting the best night's sleep, but it was a price I was willing to pay for the continued convenience of boobing indefinitely.
Probably I would have continued this way for another year, but then I got pregnant with our second.
(Side note: some people think that breastfeeding is a form of contraception. This is a myth. I have no idea how it started, but it is verifiably false.)
Did I have to stop breastfeeding once I found out I was pregnant?
The short answer is no.
Some mamas whose pregnancy is deemed "high risk" by their doctor or have other potential complications may be advised by their medical professionals to stop breastfeeding. This was not the case for me.
Some mamas experience nipple discomfort and increased soreness during nursing after they get pregnant. I didn't have that, but a couple months into my second pregnancy it did become a bit uncomfortable to have a 30 pound toddler pressing into my abdomen while nursing.
Around the same time, I had decided to only use the boob for nap times and at night as a fast-acting (and infallible) sleeping potion. The little one was eating well throughout the day and was really only using the boob for comfort.
Another thing I found out after the fact is that for some mamas who breastfeed while pregnant, the hormone hurricane that happens in the first trimester is sometimes made more aggressive with nursing. This doesn't affect the baby in the womb or the nursing kiddo in the least, but it can make the mama suffer stronger morning sickness and more extreme fatigue. I was one of those mamas and my first trimester with baby number two was a doozy. Had I known about this earlier I probably would have tried to wean sooner.
So how do people stop breastfeeding?
I started looking into various methods of weaning.
First option I looked into was quitting cold turkey. This is not a good idea as the engorgement that can follow can be particularly painful and difficult to deal with. You might get blocked ducts and that can lead to mastitis. I never experienced these, but I have it on good authority from a friend of mine that it is intensely painful and should be avoided at all costs.
Some people said that their kid just up and decided one day that they were done with the boob and they just stopped asking for it. I had a chat with my one-and-a-half year old and he told me in no uncertain terms that he would never be the one to originate quitting the boob. I believe him.
A common piece of advice that I saw online was to "cut back one feeding at a time". This one left me perplexed as it seemed to imply that there were mamas out there who had a feeding schedule to which they stuck daily.
This was never my experience. Some days my kid was on the boob every half hour. Other days he would go hours without asking for boob. So how was I to go about "cutting back one feeding at a time" when some days he nursed four times and other days twenty? I liked the idea, but I never could wrap my head around how it would work for our situation.
Another thing I kept seeing was using cabbage leaves to get your boobs to "dry out". While this may work, I didn't feel like walking around with soggy leaves in my bra was something I was likely to stick with consistently.
The last bit of advice I kept hearing about was putting some lemon juice or apple cider vinegar on your nipples when it was time to feed and telling your kid that the milk had turned bad or something. I had two criticisms of this method. One was that it felt deceptive and I didn't want to lie to my kid. Two was that my son is not fazed by bitter tastes at all and I've witnessed him chomp on lemons. I was not going to risk having him chomp on my nipple like that.
So, what did I do?
I decided that we would wean from breastfeeding gradually and together. Every time we made a change, I would give my kid a heads up, and then explain to him why we were doing what we were doing. I told him many times that this was not a punishment, he had not done anything wrong. In fact it was the opposite, that he was doing such a great job of growing the body that the next step in growing up was no longer relying on milk.
I divided the task into four categories that we would tackle one at a time:
Nursing throughout the day as a snack or just for comfort.
Nursing to get him down for naps during the day.
Waking up at night to nurse.
Nursing as the last part of our bedtime routine.
We had already stopped the "snack nursing" and he had done okay with that. He would ask for milk (we taught him a few words in sign language and that was one) and I would coax him to just snuggle or have a real snack instead.
Next we worked on napping without relying on the boob. The first couple days took a bit of work, holding him, carrying him for a while (which was extra hard because I was struggling with first trimester fatigue), but eventually he understood that we had a new routine for naps and this step was complete.
My next goal was to cut out the overnight nursing. I explained to my kid that he was getting plenty to eat throughout the day, and didn't need to have milk throughout the night. I assured him that I wasn't going anywhere and if he woke up in the middle of the night I would be there for him. My husband and I prepared to have a few sleepless nights, but it was less dramatic than I anticipated. My son did wake up a few times, but went right back to sleep with some snuggles.
The last step was our bedtime routine. I gave him a heads up that we weren't going to be using the boob anymore after that week. I counted down the days with him, and that Friday night we had our last breastfeeding session.
The next night I reminded him that we were done with the boob. I kept the rest of our bedtime routine exactly as it was, even holding him the same way as I would have if we were nursing.
He asked me for milk a handful of times, and I gently reminded him each time that we weren't doing milk anymore. He wasn't thrilled about it, but there was no massive meltdown or anything, and after some time he fell asleep.
The next few days went about the same.
Now, I don't even need to hold him at bedtime. He just lies down, wiggles for a bit, then falls asleep on his own.
Every baby is different. Every mama is different. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to this stuff.
If you want to wean a different way, so long as it works for you and your little one, I support you.
Good luck!