I'm pondering weaning Chase. I had set a goal for myself to breastfeed her for 6 months when I was pregnant. Hitting that mile marker felt fantastic given the difficult start we had, and it immediately made me want to do better and set another goal for a year. I'm still planning to continue our routine at least until her first birthday, but I sense that weaning will be more difficult for the both of us than I had hoped. Chase is not a big fan of formula. She's coming along nicely with learning to use a zippy cup although has limited practice with it due to the fact that I don't really believe in giving her juice at this age. She gets plenty of whole fruits from her diet, and her current obsession with clementines assures that she never gets another constipation, which happens to be the only time I give her diluted juice. I've tried giving her formula in the zippy cup, and she practically spits out a mouthful she manages to take. EVERY TIME. She's eating three square meals a day now, nursing in between them for "snacks," and still nurses first thing in the morning and before bed. She's beginning to night wean herself and I'm just going to follow her lead and not force the issue, although Dr. Weissbluth probably would not approve. I just don't know how to progress from our current schedule without her cooperation. I'd hate to regress back to the bottle, but it might be the next trick I have to try. Maybe she'll humor me if I go with something like a Adiri bottle instead of her usual Dr. Brown? Any suggestions are very much welcomed and appreciated!
*Wil corrected me this morning after he read the post and said that it was called a "sippy" cup instead of "zippy." I think I knew that but it wasn't evidently clear to me at whatever early hour in the morning I wrote the thing. Momma is going to need lots and lots of naps today away from the babbling teething creature.
Happy 26th Valentines Day!
5 months ago
Caroline was the same way with the formula. She would very occasionally take breastmilk from a bottle, but would spit out formula. Once she even took a drink of a friend's sippy cup of formula, then proceeded to gag and then wipe off her tongue with her sleeve. Dramatic right? To this day she still won't drink milk! I stopped nursing at a year, and she just has been eating a lot of yogurt and taking calcium vitamins. I think I should have tried more often with the formula though, because maybe she would have just given in?
ReplyDeleteAlso, with the sippy cup, we've found that giving Annabelle one just with ice water is good for the teething. It makes a huge mess, because she drools and spits most of it out down her shirt, but the cold top of the cup feels good to chew on. I just gave the cup to her to play with for a while, and now she's finally starting to get the hang of how to hold it.
Hope you guys are well!
I too gave Christian a sippy cup with ice water for awhile. He did drink formula rather well when I stopped nursing at 11.5 months. We weaned from the day nursing, then the night nursing and finally the morning was the last to go. I think it was harder on me then him! I went back to the same bottles he had been using (only did formula for a couple weeks and then went to whole milk) and did the same thing to wean him off the bottles at 15 months. Quit the day ones, quit the morning one and then in December we quit the night bottle. He didn't really seem to notice since we did it so gradually. He loves his sippy cup with whole milk. I know every child is different though, but that is just our two cents! Maybe you could pump just enough for a bottle feeding and slowly give her pumped milk out of a bottle instead of nursing? That is if you want to continue pumping. I was never a big fan seeing as I was too lazy to do it! HA.
ReplyDeleteI nursed my older daughter for 13 months, but around 11 she actually started to wean herself. We transitioned her straight to milk (per doctor, not on our own) by mixing pumped breast milk with milk and slowly changing the ratio to increase the actual milk.
ReplyDeleteIt was harder for me than her because I always thought we would end on my terms.
Our morning feed was the last to go, but she did sometimes ask for a bottle before bed. And when she did, I would let her have a small bottle of regular milk (even though she was older than a year). We never did use any formula but I can guarantee she would have spit it out.
I can't remember the sippy cup, but I think we did breast milk in that sometimes. Once she transitioned, then we did milk in the sippy cup (but she knew how to use it by then). I know she didn't have juice yet. Maybe water... but I don't remember that. (Hopefully I will remember by the time Laney gets to that phase.)
I know you didn't personally ask me, but I thought I would share.