Weaning diary notes #2 - cold turkey day

Sun 23.17:
Felix rolled over onto his tummy in his sleep. Started screaming. Full breastfeed.

Mon 01:00:
Same thing happened again. Short burst of booby milk.

Mon 02.50 - 04.00:
Felix rolled over again. We righted him, twice, then let him cry himself to sleep for 1 hour and 10 minutes. It is at some point while he was screaming that I decided we go cold turkey from now.

Mon 07.30:
Felix wakes. Daddy offers bottle nonchalantly. Squealibeans Rejects Bottle. I am totally on edge, assuming he is a bomb about to go off.

Mon 11.00:
Whimpering grows but he's nowhere near frantic. After some initial resistance bf bottle-feeds him 110ml of EBM/formula mix.

WOW! We are amazed. Clearly, he can still drink from a bottle!!

Mon 1pm:
Whimpering grows again, but still not frantic. Felix drinks another 70ml EBM/formula mix from a bottle.

Mon 14.50:
After persistent complaining since his last feed Felix takes another 110ml. Another small step forward. Had been feeling very antsy up to this point, but again, calm and hopefulness is restored.

Mon 17.10:
Felix drinks 110ml, given to him by his mum.

Mon 19.00:
120ml, again given by mum. He finishes the bottle. I wish I had put more milk in.

Total Monday: 520ml.

Tues some heinous hour of night:
Felix woke, hungry and screaming. After 45 mins I caved in and give him 170ml from a bottle.

Tues 09.00:
150ml from bottle.

Tues 11.30:
130ml from bottle.

Which brings us up to now.

Is it safe to say he's weaned now? Could it really be that quick? After all our anxiety, surely it should be a lot more painful? It makes me feel stupid for worrying so much. Anyway, the plan is really to establish him on milk for a few days, then go back to giving him some solids too and a few sips from the cup. I've been pumping the boobs to ease the pain, and just need to reduce the frequency and volume I express each time. Then we'll increase the formula to EBM ratio till it's totally formula. All eminently doable.

At some point we need to make sure he's full enough during the days so he can go back to sleeping through the night again. Aaarrrgghhhh at the thought of sleep training again. At least there is something left for me to worry about.

Operation Cold Turkey starts earlier than expected

As if snuffles, teething, cup training, weaning onto solids and me cutting back the booby milk weren't enough, Felix started to roll over onto his tummy. It's a huge developmental milestone... only he started doing it in the middle of the night. Every 90 minutes to be precise.

Doubtless after his day of solids-training, he hadn't eaten enough and was unsettled and HUNGRY, which made him thrash about and madly suck his fist, which made him roll over. Lots. Which made him scream. Lots. Poor little mite, it's understandable.

But despite that, in my exhausted, I-can't-take-much-more-of-this stupor I decided, gulp, that we couldn't have Felix being that hungry in the night. Going cold turkey on the breastfeeding front and bottle feeding only for Felix would have to start ASAP.

Decision reached, and a plan is developed.

After a positive start on the weaning front, the "dropping one feed at a time" plan is now getting really boring and totally frustrating. It would be OK...:

(a) ...if we had really regular feeds to begin. But we don't. Felix is fed on demand and that suits me just fine. The book is normally a really good source of advice on most aspects of baby-rearing, but lets me down this time by suggesting we establish some kind of feeding regularity before we start the slow weaning process. A quick flick to the notes on 'routines' tells me what I already know - that it can take 2 days to 2 months to establish regular feeding patterns. So I have neither the time nor the inclination.

(b) ...if we could swap a breast feed for a bottle, but Felix has rejected the bottle. We tried pretty hard since June to get him to accept it again but with no success. It was tiring for the bf and traumatic for me (see e). The only thing that made it better was the decision to give it up and try alternatives.

(c) ...if Felix were developmentally ready for the alternatives, aka drinking from the cup alternated with solid food. On the cup front both my trusty sources (Babycentre and the aforementioned book) recommend trying without a spout first but tipping the cup against his mouth and letting the baby learn how to sip. This is what we did with Jambeans so I've been happily doing it again with Felix. This time round I consult the book in a little more detail and find this gem: whilst babies as young as Felix are ready for the cup, I shouldn't expect him to drink more than a couple of fluid oz at a time. A penny drops - he has been doing this quite well but I was expecting him to ramp up the volumes quite quickly and had been getting frustrated when I couldn't see any more progress. It turns out he's doing fine with the cup training, but the cup isn't a reliable alternate source of milk to the boobs...

(d) ...if Felix ate more solids. At the same age Jambeans couldn't gobble the solids up fast enough. It was amazing how quickly she went from her first tentative spoonfuls to eating loads of veggies a day, often more than me. But she was premature, and they often take to solids very early, and every baby is different. But even though weaning her was totally stressful it did mean we knew she would be able to eat something when she started nursery, and we could keep her fluid level up with very runny rice porridge. After a seemingly good start it turns out Felix really hasn't taken to rice porridge at all.

(e) ...if we had a positive memory of weaning Jasmine. We did it the slow way with her too, replacing a nursing with a solid meal and sips from the cup. She took to solids super early and super fast, but any attempts to get milk down her were painful and we tried pretty much every tip, trick, hint, vessel and program there is. They all failed. My return to work deadline was looming. I hadn't had an hour to myself for 9 months. Jasmine wouldn't drink independently. I was crying quite a lot. It was totally horrible.

So bf and I talk this all over after his day of looking after the bub. And it goes a bit like this:

1) Bf feels that the slow method means it is too easy for the bub to insist on booby milk and too easy for the mum to give in and try solids/alternatives at the next feed. He is totally right.

2) Bf suggests going cold turkey on the boobs and replacing it with solids/cup. I feel fear. I don't want to have another child who doesn't drink enough milk. If he turns out like Jambeans there will always be the worry at the back of our minds that he simply isn't getting enough calcium in his diet. I suggest we try cold turkey, but with the bottle.

3) Bf feels fear. He doesn't believe Felix is capable of drinking from the bottle any more - that he has lost the technique.

4) True to bf's advice of having a confident attitude I spout some bullshit about having a 'vision' of Felix drinking milk from a bottle, sipping happily from a cup and eating solids when he wants. I talk more crap about 'believing in the vision' and that we have to 'believe that Felix can do what it takes to get there.'

5) I surprise myself by believing what I say. Bf surprises me more by saying 'OK. No time like the present. Lets start tomorrow.'

6) Reassuringly, I return to cowardly form and say I need time to get my head round the idea of not nursing Felix any more, so lets start next week.

But the good news is, we have a plan.

A scary plan, but a good plan nevertheless.

Getting Felix to sleep through - first night

Felix is a pretty good sleeper, and was making fab progress till he rejected the bottle at the beginning of June. Since then, either because of, or simply by coincidence, his night waking patterns have been a lot more unpredictable, so I decided that as soon as we get back from holiday we should aim to get him to sleep through. He's just shy of 5 months' old - it feels like the right time.

We're not 100% sure what the best way to go about it is. We keep debating whether to try and link it to getting him used to the bottle again. Weaning is the next major hurdle, and will take longer (and, because of the nightmare I had last time, and because history is repeating itself, is the thing I dread more than torture, more than death, more than global chocolate-drought). So we've been pratting about trying to give him a 10pm bottle feed (maybe he wasn't hungry or he was and just rejected it - either way it was a FAIL and I was plunged into despair just before bedtime) and then trying to bottle feed him in the middle of the night when he did wake (same result, same potential reasons, same middle of night despair). We've now decided to ditch that particular problem till later, bench the despair, and focus on getting him to sleep through for now.

With Jambeans we didn't try till she was 7 months corrected, and when we finally did get round to doing it, we did it in a gentle, slow way - first weaning her off the breast, then weaning her off the cuddles - but the thing that really worked worked was ultimately letting her cry it out, so we're going to cut out all the Good Cop tactics and try the same with Felix. Luckily for me, bf gets to be Bad Cop.

Soooo, first night's report:

Felix cried for 1 hour and 8 minutes. It started of a gentle, bearable, whiny-wimpering. Then got more persistent so Bf administered cuddles after half an hour. Then turned into full on shrieking which woke Jambeans up. Then, all of a sudden - total quiet. And sleep till 7am.

The first night is supposed to be the worst, so by my calculations that was a good start.

Fingers crossed for next week

In 90 minutes time we're going to leave for a week's holiday in the lakes with some uni friends of the bf. Fingers crossed it will be a watershed moment and we can leave this horrible, horrible week behind us. Felix rejected the bottle again last night, plunging me further into despair over my lack of freedom, and I couldn't sleep even when I had the opportunity. Today I am so tired I have been dry-wretching in the toilet bowl.

That said, it hasn't been a total nightmare. Despite the exhaustion had a lovely day on Wednesday when I went to work to introduce Felix to the lay-deez. Oh yes, and hand my notice in! (I have a new job which I start in October - 3 months' time - but more on that later...) And yesterday my lovely sis came to see me, and after the obligatory shouting match for the first hour we kissed and made up and then had a spankingly lovely day.

Can you believe it has taken me a whole day to pack for just 1 weeks' holiday? The scariest thing is my stuff fits into one small rucksack, but the car is jampacked full of all the kid stuff we seem to "need" these days.

Lack of bottle

Today I've found myself dwelling and worrying impatiently about Felix' bottle rejection. Since total bottle meltdown a few weeks ago, bf has succesfully reinstated late night feedings, basically by shoving the teat in the bub's mouth when he is half asleep and not overly hungry. We also upped the flow rate of the teat which seems to have gone down well, so I've been feeling OK and relaxed and optimistic that weaning onto a bottle will be just dandy... until last night when I tried giving Felix some bottle milk when I was tired and my boobs weren't very full and when he wouldn't settle only be treated to a firm NO.

Ho hum.

The frightening prospect of a short leash

My worst nightmare came true as Felix rejected the bottle 3 days ago. Didn't realise how much I had come to rely on him feeding from a bottle for my sense of freedom - it affords me the opportunity for a few hours respite from kids if I need to take it. As soon as that was gone I crashed emotionally. Painful memories of months of anxiety, misery and depression during Jasmine's bubtime bottle refusal/ cup rejection/ total weaning nightmare came flooding back together with feelings of resentment towards Felix - not nice. Spent most of the last 3 days forcing myself to stay calm and be positive then breaking down in floods of tears when it didn't work.

Bf tried the feeding him when he's half asleep trick last night and thankfully he drank without much ado. Early days but it's still a huge weight off my shoulders.

First drops of formula

The bottle feeding has been going quite well. It's been about a week now and F-beans drinks quite happily from both breast and bottle. Since the bf has been home he has been giving the bub a night time bottle feed at around 10.30pm while I am in bed slowly drifting into a coma, and that helps me feel less tired. The thing that is really hard though is expressing enough milk during the day so he can have his night time feed of 120ml. And I've totally given up any hope of being able to stockpile any EBM in the fridge in case I get a pink pass one day.

Soooo, we bought a bit of formula to bulk up the EBM bottle. To my amazement the bf actually suggested it - I thought he would be dead against - but we gave EBM/formula mix to the bub last night and he drank it OK.

So it's all progressing well. The next part of the plan is for the bottle feed at night to act as the 'knockout' feed and make the bub sleep for at least 4 hours, but preferably 5 or 6. Hasn't worked at all so far, but I live in hope :-)

Feeling hopeful

My one mission for Felix is for him to drink from a bottle - something we never managed to encourage Jambeans to do, despite numerous attempts. We used to joke we bought enough different shaped bottles and teats to open a shop. Well, the shop has come in handy and yesterday we offered Felix some EBM from a breast-shaped bottle that I have been hanging all my hopes on. A wonder-bottle.


The good news is that he guzzled all 70ml of it in about a minute. It was like watching someone down a pint.


So I started feeling quite hopeful and immediately imagined the perfect future where Felix would take to the bottle with zero fuss, and would switch between that and breast quite happily. Whereas the voice of reason, aka boyfried, kept saying 'Jambeans guzzled her first bottle like that, and look what happened' and then, slightly worriedly, 'if he rejects the breast, then I suppose it means formula from this age.' Inevitably, I got all snappy and pleaded with him to indulge me and my perfect future visions just for one night.

The not-so-good-news is that we had enough EBM stockpiled for Jambeans to last us forever, whereas to bottle feed Felix the way we want to involves me expressing milk. More time, more hassle, more sore boobs etc.


But defo worth it if it means Felix will drink from a bottle...