Hellobee Boards

Okay - that helps. I just went through this (DD turned 1 last week), so hopefully my experience will help you. We are still nursing at wake up and bedtime, but other than that DD drinks WCM from a straw cup. We keep a straw or sippy cup full of water out with her toys all day and DD also drinks from that whenever she feels like it.

The first thing I think you need to do is drop the overnight feed. In order to do that, you will likely need to substantially up his daytime food intake and do some method of sleep training/night weaning. We successfully night weaned DD at 9.5 months by using a modified Ferber/CIO method, but I am not sure how you feel about that. You could also start giving him a bottle of WCM in the MOTN and gradually reduce the amount of milk, but I don't have any experience with that method so I am not sure how it would work.

At around 9 months, we started offering DD a straw cup of cold WCM with dinner. At first, she was totally not into it and would only drink 1/2 ounce at a time. Gradually she started drinking more milk, so we started offering it at every solids meal. She was still getting 3 bottles of BM during the day in addition to WCM in a cup and 3 meals + a snack of solids every day.

Three weeks before her birthday, I stopped nursing during the day on weekends so every day would be consistent, and we dropped one bottle - DD got 2 bottles of BM + one straw cup of WCM per day. The next week, we dropped to one bottle + 2 straw cups, and the next week (her birthday week) dropped the bottle altogether. We also gradually increased the amount of solids we offered each week to make up for the lost nutritional intake between BM and WCM, especially since she was not drinking as much WCM as she was getting in BM from a bottle. Now, at about 2 weeks past her birthday, she is drinking a good amount of WCM during the day (about 10-12 ounces, which is more than the amount of BM she was getting in bottles) and seems to really like it. She will reach for her milk cup now and finish a few ounces at a time. I have also noticed that her desire for solids has increased considerably.

My pump weaning followed roughly the same path... I had been pumping 3x/day, so when I dropped to 2 bottles, I also dropped to 2 pumps. The next week, however, when it was time to drop to 1 pump, I was only getting 2 ounces when I pumped, so I just stopped pumping altogether. I had enough milk left in my freezer to make 1 bottle per day for that last week. I did not have any engorgement or discomfort issues, but my hormones shifted drastically and I felt really sick (nauseous and headachy) for two weeks after I stopped pumping.

I hope that is helpful!

@travellingbee: I *think* our nanny dropped the afternoon bottle first. So the schedule would have looked like this:

nurse at wake up
breakfast
bottle
morning nap
lunch
bottle
afternoon nap
snack with cup of milk
dinner with cup of milk
nurse at bedtime

then this:

nurse at wake up
breakfast with cup of milk
morning nap
lunch
bottle
afternoon nap
snack with cup of milk
dinner with cup of milk
nurse at bedtime

it now looks like this:
nurse at wake up
snack + offer cup of milk (I usually give DD a small cup of Cheerios and her cup of milk while I get ready - sometimes she eats/drinks, sometimes she just plays with it)
breakfast
morning nap
lunch + offer milk
afternoon nap
snack + offer milk
dinner + offer milk
nurse at bedtime

@travellingbee: How's it going? Have you started weaning?

Subscribing to this. I did pretty well with day weaning but I'm still scared of night weans. May need to go there in order to conceive though. We are waiting a couple more months but in the interim I am trying a gradual wean. I like some of Dr. Jay Gordons suggestions but i have to midify a lot of them. Good luck to you.