To Wean or Not to Wean: The Pain-free and Tear-free Way (well..almost!)

WARNING: if you are easily embarrassed by the mention of breasts, breastfeeding, boobs, nursing, weaning, or any other form of these words, then this blog post is NOT for you! Just thought I would give a warning to some of my readers :) Also the instructions in this post on how to make weaning easy is just my opinion/ experience. It is not backed by any professional opinions or information, but I would assume it would work for everyone!

But if you want to know a great ALMOST pain-free/ tear-free way to wean...then read on my fellow nursing moms.

He was this happy for the first 5 days of weaning

I have to give a funny story of my little munchkin before I get into the details of the weaning. My title says: pain-free/ tear-free (well almost) because my son did perfectly for 5 days no crying just being a little fussy, but on day 6 and 7 of weaning he was fussing constantly and crying for no reason (didn't know if it was due to weaning or teething). It seemed as though he didn't notice he was missing his daily boob for 5 days straight and then on the 6th day he realized I had been gypping him. Poor thing :( Other than that he has been handling it well!

Here's what I learned from my weaning experience:


1st: Decide your weaning timeline.

I did not have any pressing reason why I should hurry and try to wean my little one by the time he hit a year so I decided to do a mixture of a slow wean and letting him self-wean

2nd: Listen to your body and to your baby

Recently, in probably the past 2 months, my munchkin has acquired another 4 teeth. A baby nursing with 6 teeth is not always the most comfortable feeling especially when they're first coming in. It consists of a LOT of rubbing. I decided that when he was 11 months we would start a slow wean and see how it went. He was already down to 3 feedings a day, but a lot of times during the middle of the day feeding he would play around and only eat for maybe 10 minutes when he typically would nurse for 20 minutes. That's when I decided he was giving me the signal that he was ready to skip that middle of the day nursing session. Once I cut this session out, my breasts were better able to adapt to the teeth and he NEVER even missed/ cared about skipping this feeding

3rd: Let your baby self-wean (if you can/ within reason)

I knew that I did not want to do a cold turkey wean as soon as he turned 1. I didn't want to deal with the discomfort nor did I want to put him through that upset! Since we were already down to 2 feedings a day, I slowly started making sure they were properly spaced out. He would wake up around 530am, nurse, and then go back to sleep. In the evening I tried to feed him between 630-730, and the put him to bed around 830. At this point, I made sure to never nurse him to sleep anymore. I did not want him to associate breastfeeding with sleeping.

One night I was out tutoring and the hubsters was watching little M and he fell asleep without his nightly nursing session! That's when I knew he was ready to give that session up also. From there we were down to once a day, just the 530am session. Another couple of weeks passed and one morning he slept through his usual boobie time until 830 and that's how we cut out the morning nursing session.

4th: Cabbage, cabbage, cabbage, heat, heat, heat, and massages!!!

Thankfully, I did not get engorgement or a lot of discomfort. I'm pretty sure this is because I slowly weaned instead of doing cold turkey. I did put cabbage in my bra during the day to help dry up my milk faster and when they were sore I put heat on them at night or massaged them. I HIGHLY recommend using cabbage; the coolness of it really helps the heat that is radiating off your breasts while you're body is trying to reabsorb your milk. The one mistake I made was not having cabbage in my house the day I started weaning him! If your breasts feel too full or are uncomfortable, you can easily express some milk for relief. I did end up with a couple of hard spots (what felt like clogged ducts) and since they weren't going away as quickly as I wanted, I did let the little munchkin nurse for 3 mins on day 3 while he was still sleeping. BUTTTT, I do not recommend this is your child will fuss. Mine was asleep and did not even notice; he drained my ducts for a few minutes and the spots never came back.

Just a little over a week and we're completely done nursing! Very little discomfort and very little crying. Like I said before he did wake up fussy on day 6 and 7, but I really think it was more teething/ growing then the fact that I cut out his beloved boobie time.


Extra hints: One thing that made this easier was when I would be gone during his feeding time. It made the adjustment easier on him; he didn't have to stare at his food source refusing to feed him!
Also decrease your fluid intake a LOT and start introducing whole milk when you get down to only 2 feedings per day! Slow introducing the whole milk will help them take to it more easily.

If you're weaning, try the above steps and it should go smoothly!

This is what his face looks like when he gets sad....almost made me want to give in on day 6 and 7!