I had planned to wean Ivan a few months ago but he just isn’t ready yet. With his first birthday right around the corner I really wanted to at least get a good start on it before he is one. So this month I have been really focusing on it. We are now able to get to 5PM (about 12 hours) without nursing. He still nurses one to two times a night but I figured that those would be the hardest to let go. He eats solid food very well and takes a sippy with meals and snacks. So I decided to give him a bottle of expressed milk instead of nursing when he wanted during the day. He had been nursing for comfort a lot, not necessarily because he was hungry. Those first couple of times were hard to get him to take the bottle from me but I noticed that as time went on, he started wanting that less and less. Nap time is about the only time in that 12 hour window that he wants a bottle now. And sometimes the bottle doesn’t help him fall asleep anyway. My supply is keeping up with his demand for the most part. There is the occasional day where I have to pump when I get up in the morning but I haven’t had to freeze it, I just give it instead of the cows milk.

I had been pumping an extra 5-10 ounces a day from birth till about May. I had a ton of milk stored up in our freezer. I donated some of it to a local momma a while back as I had run out of room for it. I recently decided to donate the rest of what I had frozen because Ivan has no need for it now and I don’t want it to go to waste. So I joined a couple groups on Facebook (Human milk 4 human babies) and met up with a mom who needed some for her little one. I gave her about half of it and am waiting on hearing back from a second person that wanted some as well. It makes my  heart so happy to know that my milk is going to nourish a baby in need.

His new teeth coming in are also proving to be a problem. I am in lots of pain when he nurses now and I am left with teeth marks that were never a problem before. It is slowly getting better as my body is adjusting but it really makes me want to get done that much faster.