My Breastfeeding & Weaning Journey
Throughout pregnancy and postpartum, everyone loves to constantly remind you to find joy in every single moment and that time moves quickly so you don’t want to miss a second.
Here’s the thing : while I understand the sentiment, I think this mentality and constant reminder puts a lot of pressure on us new moms.
At least for me, it was equivalent to ‘toxic positivity’ in the sense that I would feel guilty when I didn’t love every single moment or if I was ready for a chapter (like breastfeeding) to come to an end. I had these voices in my head saying that I would regret ending this chapter because one day I might miss it. Seriously, what an absolute mind fuck and an almost impossible way to make clear decisions.
Of course I’m going to miss every moment. I am insanely obsessed with my daughter and already look back on her first days and miss them so intensely. But thats how life works! There are chapters in life that come and go and we have to learn how to move through them without holding on so tightly that we can’t enjoy the present or neglect doing the things we know will make us feel good in the now.
So here’s my story with breastfeeding and how I knew it was time to end the chapter.
Breastfeeding :
First off, something I highly recommend to any moms to be that are hoping to breastfeed, is meeting with a lactation consultant before giving birth. I met with mine — Barb — when I was 37 weeks pregnant and she came to the house and walked me through everything I would need to know when it came to breastfeeding. She brought a babydoll and we worked on different feeding positions, looked at my pump to make sure I had all of the correct size pump parts for my body and taught me so much about colostrum and what will happen when my milk comes in. (This was covered by my insurance and I found her through https://lactationnetwork.com )
We also planned for Barb to come to the house the day we came home from the hospital so that she could immediately help with our latching and work through any kinks that might come up. So amazing having this extra support and education so I wasn’t super overwhelmed by it all.
Thankfully, my milk supply came in no problem and after some patience, we got our latch down! There were some really hard days in the beginning but I knew I wanted to breastfeed and kept reminding myself that this wasn’t only new and overwhelming to me, but new and overwhelming for my little baby as well. I just kept saying to myself and saying out loud to my daughter “you can do hard things” and we finally found our groove.
There was a moment when my milk came in that she wasn’t latching very well because of the engorgement and wasn’t eating as long as I thought she should be so we called our girl Barb and she came over and checked on everything, weighed Harper and gave us some tips + reassured us that Harper was gaining weight after her feedings so we didn’t need to worry. Another reminder that every baby is so different and the amount they need to eat might vary so having someone on hand to help ease your mind is so important during those first couple of days!
I spent the first 6 weeks in a bubble feeding Harper on demand and pumping to build up my freezer stash (more on this in a bit). Even though I wasn’t planning on introducing a bottle until after the first month, I still pumped a ton since my supply was coming in hot and heavy I wanted to take advantage of it. It takes a few weeks for your supply to kind of even out and figure out the correct amount for your body and your baby, so it’s definitely a good idea to utilize it if you have a ton of milk coming in and save some in the freezer for a rainy day.
If you don’t have a ton of milk coming in, I would check on a few things like hydration, nutrition and load up on some lactation teas / foods that might help your body produce some more — and most importantly, try not to stress (so much easier said than done!) but try and keep your body in a calm space so that it can adjust as best as possible to accommodate you and baby.
Something my mom kept reminding me the first few days when things were challenging was that if breastfeeding was important to me and I really wanted to do it, push through this challenging part and stick with it because it will get easier over time! And guess what, it did get easier over time and those baby cuddles post feeding session were the greatest boost of serotonin of ALL time.
In those first few weeks this app was one of my favorites to help me track everything going on with baby Harper : Nara Baby
I would put in every feeding, right side or left side so I never had to worry about remembering it on my own (mom brain lol)
As time goes on, the feeding schedule becomes so much more intuitive and there’s less need to track every feed. It sort of happens naturally and becomes much more relaxed!
Bottles:
OKAY here is where we ran into some issues and caused some of my major frustrations when Harper was about 6 months old.
We didn’t give many bottles to Harper from the beginning because first, I wanted to make sure we had our latch down before introducing a bottle, second, I hated pumping and I had stored up so much that I figured we could just use what we had in the freezer whenever we needed.
For a while, when we gave a bottle, she would take it no problem so we felt good about not needing to giver her one every day. It was only on occasion when we would leave her, which wasn’t often at all.
Here’s where we hit a major roadblock : all of a sudden Harper was starting to refuse bottles and we realized they smelled rancid! I tried multiple bags from the freezer only to realize they all smelled like they had gone bad. After some research, we figured out that my milk as an enzyme in it that makes it ‘go bad’ even when it’s frozen. (Technically the milk isn’t bad but it doesn’t smell or taste good so your baby will refuse it). This is called High Lipase Enzyme
This started to turn Harper off to the bottle, and at the same time she was hitting 6 months old and was starting to have her own opinions, realizing she was able to say no to the bottle. So now, she was fully refusing bottles since they were never fully a part of her routine.
LISTEN TO ME!! — make bottles a consistent part of your babies routine if possible. This will give you more options later on down the road.
So, we tried for about 2 months to get our girl to take a bottle with formula since my milk was no good. (there are things you can do to get your baby to take a bottle but at this point I was so exhausted and pumping was no longer a part of my routine).
We had Barb our lactation consultant come back in to help us and here are a few things she did to try and help us:
— Even though it is counterintuitive, she said we should have me, the mom feed Harper the bottle rather than someone else. She is used to coming to me for feedings so she will feel more comforted this way.
— Try different nipple shapes and flows. Her top recommendation was : Lansinoh
— If you have breastmilk on hand, mix breastmilk with formula (if switching to formula) to get baby used to the new taste. You can also mix formula into their puree’s if you have introduced food already.
Weaning :
In comes the weaning process.
I finally hit a point where I was beyond exhausted from having this huge responsibility solely on my shoulders. Since Harper was refusing bottles still, it had been 9 months of me being the one doing every bedtime, soothing her back to bed in the middle of the night when she woke to eat and all of the nursing sessions throughout the day. The added stress of her refusing the bottle was sending me into a downward spiral.
After some thought, I realized the best thing for me and for my baby was to begin to take away the option of breastfeeding. Once that wasn’t available to her, I figured taking the bottle wouldn’t be so hard. Everyone assured me that babies won’t let themselves go hungry and since she was eating 3 well rounded, nutritious meals a day at this point plus snacks, I wasn't too worried.
I started by cutting out the mid-morning feed followed by the afternoon feed. I continued doing the nighttime feedings and the first feed of the day for the entire first week. Slowly, we got her back to sleeping through the night which naturally cut out the night time feeds and then cut out the bedtime nursing feed. The more we cut down feeds and I wasn’t home during the days, she would take the bottle!
PS — this is the bottle she finally took! It was a sippy cup top rather than a regular bottle nipple
It took about 2 weeks to fully wean and it was a roller coaster of hormones and emotions but it was exactly what the both of us needed.
I had a day during the weaning process where I felt guilty for weaning and thought maybe I should just suck it up and continue breastfeeding but my husband reminded me that all of these milestones are going to come at some point, our daughter wasn’t missing nursing at all so it wasn’t the time to be selfish and continue something that just wasn’t working. This was the time to help our daughter transition into the next chapter and this was so helpful for me to hear!
I shared my entire weaning journey in depth in video form on TikTok, you can watch all of my videos below!
Breastfeeding was such a wonderful, beautiful, challenging, exhausting, special time and I am so grateful we were able to have that chapter together but I am now on the other side and am sooo happy to be done. I feel so free and so much more present with my daughter. I am able to have time during the day to take care of myself, my energy levels have sky rocketed and I am 1000x a happier person. My husband and I are getting along so much better too because I feel less resentful having some of the work taken off of my plate.
If you are just starting your breastfeeding journey, my reminder would be to listen to your body, your mental state and your baby. Try not to put pressure on yourself by creating a set timeline for how long you hope to breastfeed for. This is such a unique journey and you have to do what is best for you and your family.
Wishing you the best, here to help in any way that I can! xo
I have linked some of the bottles and formulas we tried for you to try as well. We ended up going with the Dutch version of HIPP because of recommendations from other moms that struggled to get their babies on formula and we went with the Sippy top nipples from Dr. Browns because that is all that worked with our baby.
