opps. sorry it was soooo long!!

hi there here's my two pence worth!! I fed my first for 10 mths and second for 9mths. Both exclusively. I seem to remember that Luke my first took to formula without too much fuss but it was a case of me saying, right today he's not getting me it's a bottle or nothing. he put up a fight for a while then drank it. Morning is a good time to try them on the bottle first as they're going to be much more hungry than in the evening when sometimes it can be more of a comfort feed but by 10mths he was on 3 feeds a day, i think! morning, mid afternoon and eve. he went straight onto SMA progress. whereas no. 2 was a diff. story. he is very stubborn. he'd been drinking water from a cup happily for a while so i put the milk in a cup as didn't want to start on a bottle then have to wean him off that. he flattly refused all the formula's i tried. he vomitted on the first one, SMA , that had been fine for Luke. initially i tried to swap the mid afternoon feed but he only once drank some of my milk from a cup but i think he was distracted and didn't realised what he'd done!! basically i tried for about 6 weeks with this one feed, different bottles, different formula's and nothing. if he didn't take the bottle though i never gave him boob instead as that would have just been a waste of time me trying the bottle. what happened in the end was i was ill one night and woke up with almost no milk. i had a carton of SMA gold in the cupboard the stuff you give babies. So i put it in a bottle warmed it up and he drank it without a second thought! after that i quickly moved each feed onto this formula and expressed my milk each day to gradually reduce my supply. I did find it really stressful that he didn't want to take it initially but with milk in his cereal and the other feeds he was getting enough milk per day anyway.. then i think once he was established on the SMA Gold i put him onto the progress stuff which was supposed to be better for his age, the one he'd thrown up with initially but this time it was fine. phew! think that covers it!!! about to pop no. 3 and am going to try really hard to do one bottle feed a day so he gets used to it for when i wean him. my periods didn't come back till 2 months after i stopped feeding, luke and with second they didn't come back and i got pregnant again! For those struggling to get their babies of the boob i think cold turkey is the only way to go if you have too, and try dad doing it with you out of ear shot, they can also smell your milk which doesn't help. it normally only takes one time for them to accept the bottle and your away. i think from one they need 16 oz a day or maybe 20oz which is like two bottles and whatever they have in their cereal but i have a few friends with kids with milk allergies and they've not accpeted any kind of formula so dont' have any milk replacement type drink in their diet at all and they are FINE!!! easy to say i know but you have to be clear with your babies who's in charge!!! good luck.

My periods came back very soon after I cut down to two feeds a day (when my baby was nine months).

Hi Nikki and Tracy, i stopped breastfeeding when my daughter was just over one year. I went back to work when she was 9 months old, so by one year she was just having breastfeeds morning and night and drinking water and follow-on formula from a beaker in the day. I think she probably accepted the formula as I wasn't around, so nothing better was on offer. By the time she was one year old, I hardly had any milk and i think breastfeeding was mainly habit for her. I stopped feeding almost accidentally, by her missing an evening feed two nights running by falling asleep without the feed. The next morning I had an early meeting and didnt wake her before i left, so she just had formula when she got up. That night i decided not to breast feed and she didnt seem to mind. So she had gone 36 hours without a breast feed and I thought i'd managed to stop without her noticing. The next morning tho', I got her up and she sceamed the house down when she didnt get her breast feed. She broke her heart for what seemed like forever, but was really only about 20 minutes, before I managed to distract her with solid food breakfast. That was the only time she ever made a fuss about it and within about 3 dayshe seemed to have forgotten she'd ever breastfed. I felt quite a sense of loss though I had been desparate to stop and be able to have more than 1/2 glass of wine! And I had one breast literally twice the size of the other for the next two weeks - be prepared with baggy t-shirts! Good luck, Anna

Hi Nikki, I'm going through the exactly same stage with my daughter, she is nearly a year old and I am only feeding her morning and night now but despite trying for ages she will not take a bottle or drink milk out of a cup or beaker (although is fine drinking water from a beaker!!). I really want to stop now but I know she is going to go crazy if she doesn't have booby before bed time and in the morning. I think I am too soft, perhaps I need to leave my husband to it and go out for the night!! Help, anyone else got any ideas?? I really don't want to go cold turkey but I think it could be the only way now! Tracey

HI Nikki! I took me ages of trying to get my children off the breast and onto a bottle. They were both so stubborn and wouldn't take a bottle at all, not even of my milk. Pierre was 10 months and Sasha was 7 months. But I found that once I started feeding just morning and night I dried up so they went onto bottles completely soon after that. Also, when Pierre went to a bottle he lost interest in my boobs after that! With Pierre I got my period when he was 6 months when I substituted a breasstfeed with food. With Sasha I started again at 3 months even though I was exclusively breastfeeding. (That's why Pierre arrived so soon!)So there's no telling. As your boy is over a year old you could start him on a cup. He doesn't need as much milk now (check how much though). You may just have to be tough and not let him have anything - as he's on solids and I presume drinking water from a cup it won't hurt him. He may scream for the first few days but he'll get used to it! It might be easier for him to go cold turkey rather than cutting down on feeds on the day because otherwise he'll be thinking when I am going to get that breastfeed?! But you could make a single night feed part of his evening routine.