Q&A on weaning

I'm Emma Pickett and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself "Makes Milk" that was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end and I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end too. Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk and of course breastfeeding and chestfeeding are a lot more than just making milk. In the last few episodes we've been focusing on weaning and that's a subject I will continue to talk about over the coming months. We're going to have future episodes devoted to weaning a neurodivergent child. In the future we'll talk about weaning under 18 months and share parents stories of full weaning and night weaning experiences. Today's session is a little bit of a mix because we're going to have a Q&A session. I'm going to do a catch-all for some of the questions that come up from my Instagram followers and cover a range of issues in the weaning space. So we're going to jump around a little bit but hopefully you'll find some answers to some of the questions that you might have if you're in this space yourself. So first question says how do you drop that 5am feed without them starting the day? We night weaned at 19 months so he doesn't have milk during nighttime hours but when the sun is up so is his appetite. My little one refuses water and there's every chance he's hungry but I don't know what's considered a healthy snack or whether I should even be offering a snack. He happily settles for cuddles in the middle of the night but around 4.30 to 6am he wakes up demanding milk. This is a question that comes up a lot and I do wish that my answer could be different from what it's going to be because it's not necessarily great news. Parents who have been breastfeeding or chest feeding toddlers have had a magic tool. It's a magic tool that's given you a bit longer in bed, sometimes even hours longer in bed. There are breastfed toddlers who get up at 7am or even 8am and it's the hormones of breast milk that have made that possible. Once those hormones have gone things do get harder. Little people often don't have enough sleep pressure to get back to sleep because it's the hormones in breast milk like oxytocin and colicis de kinin which have been operating like sedatives. Essentially it's the equivalent of having an injection in your pocket containing sedatives, your child wakes up, you can get them to go back to sleep again by giving these lovely sedatives. They also help you to get back to sleep as well. Once they are wide awake what is going to get them to stay peacefully in bed and possibly drift off again without breastfeeding. Now there are a minority who will get back to sleep with cuddles and reassurance and a cozy bed. You might find that you can get lucky and they will be happy to get back to sleep if they're in that regulated peaceful state. You might find that music helps or maybe listening to an audiobook but honestly without warning milk I'm afraid to say a lot of little people are simply going to get up and for some of them they're going to be getting up early for the first time in their lives. You might be starting your day at 5.30 for the first time. If that is seriously not something that you are willing to tolerate you could try adjusting your sleep cycles maybe with a later bed time. You could experiment with blackout curtains. If the children are old enough you could try good old fashioned bribery. You might want to have a look at their sleep pattern overall, look at sleep pressure overall. What's happening with their nap time? Could it be that they need reduced nap time or an earlier nap or even they're ready for no daytime nap at all? A very awake little person at 4am who wants to start the day could have something else going on. So maybe worth talking to someone like an holistic sleep coach to try and find out whether other tweaking's are needed. It's possible that you could create a gray area where there's a dosing space. Maybe make your room child proof and safe. You're going to be dosing in bed. They can read or play quite games or do other things independently of you. But the understanding is that you're going to be still dosing in bed. If they're going to tolerate that. But I'm afraid the bad news is that lots of little people are not. And without that breastfeed in the morning you may find you're getting up. I wish I could have better news with that one. But I'm afraid there isn't really a magic trick to that one. Next question. Will my child sleep better when I wean? No prizes for guessing what my first answer is going to be here. There are no guarantees here. I would just start by cautioning you against comparing your child to other children. The same age, which is a habit that we all fall into. There's so much variation in the same age group. Many parents worry about what's normal. And it's very easy to confuse normal with common. You might feel that your child's behavior is abnormal when it might actually be normal, but maybe less common, for example. So as Lindsay Huckway says, we need to be careful that we don't make breastfeeding the sleep scapegoat. If somebody wants to improve their child's sleep and they end breastfeeding to do so and their sleep doesn't improve, that is a miserable space to be in. You know, you've potentially removed a tool that you did have that helped your child fall asleep again. And we've got those sedatives in breast milk. You've potentially lost that ability to use breastfeeding to help them get back to sleep and to help them transition between sleep cycles. It also helped you get back to sleep as well because the oxytocins are also going to be in your bloodstream. You've removed a correlation tool that may have also had value in other ways. And also, you know, we could do a whole other episode on the potential life, longer health impacts of breastfeeding and other things you may have removed from your child's diet and the way that breastfeeding impacts them positively has been lost. So we don't want to lose that unless we really need to. If sleep is a significant problem for your family, I would urge you to look at other things first. Lots of people will tell you that breastfeeding is the problem, but that's because we live in a culture where breastfeeding older children is often poorly understood. And when it's poorly understood, people are quickly going to blame it for things and they are often going to blame it for things like insufficient sleep or child-frequently waking. If sleep is a real problem for your family, take some time to reflect on everything else first. Speak to her Listic Sleep Coach. I mentioned her Listic Sleep Coaches because I know they're trained to look at how breastfeeding and sleep work. They understand the significance of breastfeeding. They're not going to be pushing you into a sleep training route. We're expecting you to externally control your child's sleep in a way that isn't natural. At this age, sleep can be disturbed because of lots of things. Teething, nap changes, separation anxiety, other changes in their life. There's a lot going on. However, having said that, I would say that for some children, when you do stop breastfeeding at night and you crucially offer them other ways to feel safe to transition between sleep cycles, they may gradually need less assistance from you over time. So it isn't weaning itself that helped them to sleep longer blocks. It was what happened during the weaning. So you offered other strategies. We helped to teach them to transition between sleep cycles without the breast. Your child might still rouse, but be reassured by your presence or a comforting hand or something less with less intervention and they may fall back to sleep without you needing to do something as active as breastfeeding. I would also say that as breastfed children get older, they start to sleep for longer blocks anyway and that's what happens over time. Eventually everyone's self-weaning. And the self-weaning children's self-weaning too. So we can't always say whether it was time that made the difference and age that made the difference, whether it was ending breastfeeding that made the difference. But just be careful not to make breastfeeding your sleep scapegoat. We're not going to remove breastfeeding unless we really are sure we've done everything else first. Two connected questions next. How do you night-ween if cutting the bed time feed doesn't feel right? If I want to stop feeding during the night, would it be best to also not feed to sleep initially at bed time? I'm not sure if it's confusing to offer milk then and not later. Okay, glad to clear out this confusion. Night-weening usually doesn't mean removing the bed time feed. Most people who night-ween stick with the bed time feed and very commonly the bed time feed is the absolute last feed in 24 hours to go. It's even possible to night-ween even if you're still feeding to sleep at bed time. Elizabeth Pantley who wrote the No Cry Sleep solution for babies in the No Cry Sleep solution for toddlers and preschoolers talks about something that does resonate with me. She says that if your child falls asleep on the breast and that the next wake up, they're alone and they're not feeding and you've gone, it's kind of the equivalent of an adult falling asleep in bed and then waking up on the kitchen floor. It's disconcerting. It would be discombobulating for us. It would potentially give us that jolt of adrenaline. But if they wake up and you're co-sleeping and you're still there, I think it's a bit different. You probably have to see how night-weening goes. If you are feeding them to sleep at bed time and then on that first wake up they're very dysregulated, maybe you do need to pull back on the bedtime feeding a little and offer other comfort methods just before they fall asleep. But generally, the bedtime feed isn't what changes when you start night-weaning. Usually night-weaning is what happens on the next wake-up. Okay, next question. How do you help a toddler fall asleep without the breast at bedtime if it's all they've ever known? This takes time. It doesn't change overnight, it doesn't change, by you simply taking away the breastfeeding and it doesn't change by you handing over to someone else to parent instead. The two of you are going to have to learn together new forms of co-regulation. Now in my other episodes on night-weaning and weaning a booby monster, I've talked about habit stacking. The key is often habit stacking. So laying other co-regulation techniques on top of breastfeeding. So you're still breastfeeding but you're doing something else at the same time which they're building up an association with which is giving them a feeling of safety which they come to associate with the process of falling asleep. Now with older children I often say let's pick two other co-regulation techniques. It might be something physical, it might be a cuddly toy, it might be you placing your hand in a particular position, it might be patting or stroking, although we have to be a little bit careful about patting because I think some older children do find that overstimulating. And something maybe to do with your voice. So you might be saying particular key phrases, you might be singing or humming, you might be telling a story that's very boring, it's not meant to be stimulating. The whole point is you're helping someone get back to sleep or you might be using sort of guided meditation type language. And I've mentioned before on my website on my resources page, we've got a guided meditation that Nihanda Trust got read made for me that can be used in this purpose. And you can use it as a model for something that you will create yourself. In the daytime talk about bed times, talk about the process of falling asleep, play bed times, role play bed times, talk to other adults and older children about how they fall asleep. That concept of sort of sleep hygiene we need to understand that there are choices that we make when we fall asleep. You know, these little people are very used to not having any agency over their bed times and not having to do anything conscious. But when breastfeeding is starting to go away, they're going to have to make some choices for the first time. What do they want bedtime to look like? What techniques do they like? And it may be through role play and games that you can start to explore some of those issues. We want to give them some agency over the choice of what might replace breastfeeding at bedtime. We want them to have some control over that decision. But ideally you start off with that habit stacking, you start off with layering other things on tops. So when eventually that breastfeeding is going to sneak away or go away with a conscious mutual decision, you will find that because those other techniques remain, the ones that you've built up over time that feel safe, those new associations remain, you haven't left a vacuum. You're not taking the breastfeeding away and there's nothing there to replace it. There are other techniques there that they associate with the process of falling asleep. You can't simply remove the breast and expect them to know what to do. They literally don't know what to do. So we're going to have to build up some other correlation techniques over time. Next question says, "It would be helpful to know how much crying is okay. When it escalates and they can't be soothed other than the breast, does it mean they're not ready? Or is it just a change that they're fighting?" I think that really only you can say how much distress and crying is okay. We're not just talking about whether it's okay for your child. We're talking about whether it's okay for you. If there is significant distress in the day around weaning, I think you probably do need to take some steps back. This is a situation where perhaps you haven't identified where the requests are coming from and you haven't had a chance to develop some alternative ways to meet their needs. I think at night crying is a little bit different. Crying is often about anger and frustration. They want to get back to sleep. They want to get back to sleep in their favourite way and they're really unimpressed. That's not an option. And little people can get into a meltdown state where they can't access their prefrontal cortex and think logically. Sometimes there is a sort of fighting going on. You know, they're doing their final testing. They're saying, "Are you really sticking with this? Is this really happening?" There is a testing of boundaries going on. I think if you get to the point where you think, "You know what, this instinct, if he doesn't feel right, I'm going to need to breastfeed now. I think I really do need to breastfeed." If you get to that place, absolutely your choice. You know, forgive yourself for that. It's really fine if weaning doesn't necessarily go on a continuous path one step at a time. But if you do make that decision to breastfeed in response to them being very distressed, please then pause for a little while. You can't then the next feed with whole breastfeeding again and expect them to understand that that boundary is being held. You have taught them that if they are crying and they are very distressed, eventually the boundary will not be held and you will breastfeed. And that is leaving them in a place of feeling a little bit confused, so might even use the word unsafe. We need you to be able to hold that boundary, and they need to learn from you that that boundary is being held. So if you don't feel able to hold that boundary, you need to take a bit more time to think about your habits, snacking, to think about your tiredness levels, to think about who's supporting you, to think about how determined you are that weaning is something you want to do. Distress does happen sometimes when we are weaning. We cannot take away a child's sadness, just as we have the right to end breastfeeding. They have the right to be unimpressed about that. But hopefully if we spend some time developing, I have it snacking, developing other correlation techniques, talking them to them in the day, preparing them with daytime conversation, we're going to find less distress than we would otherwise. Next question connected to this says, "Should we be seeing an improvement each night if we are night weaning?" So in my experience night weaning, and I'm talking about 18 months plus here, usually means three or four tough nights. You might see improvement during those nights, but you might have a better night and then a worse one again. It's not unusual for children to sort of almost, there's a bit of novelty maybe around initial night weaning, especially when you've been talking about it a lot and it's finally happening. It's almost a little bit of fun and a bit exciting, but when they realise that you're going to stick with it and this is the new life, then not always so impressed. So you may find sometimes that second and third nights are tougher. You might find if things aren't getting better that you need to do a little bit of a rethink, you might need to change your rules. Maybe you are going to go back to short feeds, but then they have to come off the breast and fall asleep with cuddles at that point. You might possibly say to an older child, "Okay, this is obviously very difficult for you, so maybe you can have one feed at night time when it's dark, but there's only going to be one, so let's check it's the right time and if you wake up and you want to feed, let's talk about whether that's the time to have it or whether you want to save it for later. You can't have those conversations with younger children, but you could have a conversation possibly like that with a child who's more verbal and a bit older. You might need to work a bit more on your habit stacking, looking for other comfort methods, you might need more daytime role playing conversation if you're not really not seeing an improvement. I would say if you've got four tough nights and things really aren't getting easier, you probably need to do a pause and have a think about what other strategies could you use, what else could be going on. Next question says, "Will my child eat more solid food when I wean?" So I touched on this in another episode when I talked about the decision to wean. To summarise, if your child really hasn't got the hang of solids and you were genuinely worried, removing their one guaranteed source of nutrition, which is a literal superfood, probably isn't a very wise approach. When I wrote my book about breast feeding past six months, I spoke to a range of professionals who work in this solid food space, and every single one questioned the message that parents sometimes receive that they need to wean to improve solids intake. You might potentially need to think about scheduling of milk feeds around solid meals. You might need to think about your family's approach to meals. What else could be going on? Could your child be tired at meal time if they're not eating? Could they be stressed? But please be cautious about weaning as a guarantee to transform what's happening at meal time. Having said that, if your child needs X amount of calories in 24 hours, if they're losing milk, yes, they might possibly be interested in eating a little bit more. They might drink a little bit more. After night weaning, you might find that they're interested in breakfast in a way they haven't been historically. But I don't believe it's a sensible idea to end breastfeeding because you're very anxious about their solids intake. That kind of information that parents are often given is really coming again from a place of devaluing breastfeeding. As I said, as a society, we often don't understand breastfeeding beyond infancy. We often don't understand its purpose. We don't understand its nutritional value. It does have a significant nutritional value beyond 12 months. So when you're told by someone to end breastfeeding to improve solids intake, that's often coming from a place of ignorance. And truthfully, it doesn't always work if there's something else going on. You might win from breastfeeding and still have a child who's really tired at dinner time or struggling with solids in other ways. So just like with sleep, let's not make breastfeeding the scapegoat. Let's not make it the scapegoat when it comes to solids intake as well. You may need to talk to someone else before you make the decision to end breastfeeding. You might do some juggling around and maybe try and not breastfeed so soon to the onset of a meal. That's not the same thing as winning entirely. Next question says, "How do you gently wean a three and a half year old when they're always seeing you feed an eight-month-old?" So I'm going to refer you to my episode on "Tandem feeding and tandem weaning." It absolutely is possible to wean an older child when a younger baby is present. Don't shy away from stating the very, very obvious. Their needs are different from their baby siblings. That's not an unkind thing to say. That does not cause jealousy to say that. You know, those feelings of jealousy are present in a thousand different ways, and they cannot be eliminated. If you are struggling to breastfeed your older child, don't imagine that they can't pick up on your micro expressions and the fact you are struggling. Surely that is what is going to evoke feelings of resentment and difficult feelings and feelings of being unsafe. You know, when you say, "I can only do 20 seconds and your body is tensing," and then you relax when the feed is finished, they know what's going on. So potentially moving forward with weaning is the best choice for your relationship and their emotional safety. The idea that you should force yourself to continue breastfeeding because that will protect their feelings, I think is misunderstanding what you could be conveying when you are really struggling. You honestly may not have very much choice to embrace feeding if you are really struggling feeding your older child. So we want to try and speak authentically to your child with language that is close to the truth as possible. You could say things like, "When you were a baby, I loved giving you milk so much, but my body is getting ready to stop giving you milk." I know it's hard, but I will help you. You can talk about all the weeks and months that they have breastfed and the baby hasn't. You can talk about all the things that they can do and the baby can't. All the special things that the two of you can do, that you can't do with the baby, what is their thing that they can do that the baby can't do? When I interviewed Natalia who I interviewed in the Tantan feeding episode, she talked to her daughter about how the babies are caterpillar, but her older daughter is a butterfly, turning into a butterfly. Butterfly still need cuddles, butterflies still need their mummy, but they can do different things, they can have a freedom that the baby can't have. Sometimes you've just got to face this head on and you've just got to say that everybody ends breastfeeding one day, and babies are different from older boys and girls. It's really okay to talk about that explicitly. That does not create feelings of unsafe in your older child. As I said, what can create feelings of unspeakable, you force yourself to continue breastfeeding reluctantly when you don't want to. You cannot change how you are feeling. If you are ready to win an older child, please forgive yourself for that and make some changes. Next question says, "How to manage engorgement?" Some parents who are winding down from breastfeeding are not going to feel engorge at all. They may have been winding down their supply for a while, they really may not experience significant fullness, and others may really struggle. Now, we don't want to assume that when you're weaning fullness is always a problem because actually fullness is the body receiving signals to reduce milk supply. We need it really in this process, it's our friend in the milk production adjustment process. Cool compressors can help. Do have a look online for information about dealing with engorgement, breastfeeding.support is a great website. You could possibly talk to a health professional about taking over the counter anti-inflammatories, have a look at the breastfeeding network information about that. You could also find information online about taking herbs like sage that may help reduce milk production. Please be careful about breast or chest binding because that is more likely if you're really compressing the breast to cause other problems. Do keep an eye out for symptoms of mastitis. If you've got pale skin tones, you might notice redness on the breast. You might notice a sensitive area, one localized sensitive area that feels firmer and soarer. Obviously, if you develop a temperature and you start to feel really unwell, that possibly could be bacterial mastitis. But most people, when they do experience fullness during the weaning process, it's not necessarily something to worry about and it's actually the body. Just getting used to slowing down that milk production. When our breast is full, we're accumulating a particular way protein called feedback inhibitor lactation. We're distending the prolactin receptors with sending messages to reduce production. Next question says, "How do you manage weaning blues?" "I'd like to know more about the hormonal changes I'm going through as my son stops breastfeeding." Now weaning blues is a term that refers to the emotional impact of the end of breastfeeding or chestfeeding. Some parents don't get it at all. They may even have feelings of immense joy and freedom and ecstasy. Then, then feel guilty about having those feelings and that might be their struggle. Other parents do seem to go through a feeling, a period of feeling a bit down and a bit more blue. It may be that you're actually processing a loss of a stage of your parenting. It's not necessarily just about hormones. You are saying goodbye to a part of your identity in many cases. That can hit your heart. After a tough end to breastfeeding, you might start to remember all the positive experiences and feel a sense of loss around those memories. You're saying goodbye to a phase of your life, and especially if it's your last child or your only child, there may be some big feelings around that. You're saying potentially goodbye to who you were, and especially if you're somebody who has been a lot of time online in feeding spaces and in feeding support. It can feel difficult to think about moving on from that. But for some people, there is something physiological going on. Now, you're losing oxytocin. Every time you breastfeed, you get that milk ejection reflex and you get a flood of oxytocin into your bloodstream. That is a hormone associated with contentment and peace and bliss. You may find yourself feeling a bit more anxious. It can be difficult to separate what is physiological and what is psychological, but it's possibly you may need a period of time to be a bit more kind to yourself. Some people do feel a bit more irritable when they were hoping that weaning would bring the opposite. Depending on when you're weaning and how much you were feeding, you may also have an increase in estrogen. You may have some feelings that are reminiscent of sort of PMS. There is a lot of variation. In my experience, weaning blues is something that lasts for most parents for days or weeks, but not months. And goes without saying, reach out for professional help. If there's anything about your mental health that's worrying you, where you feel you need more support with. Next question says, "How do you grieve the end of nursing?" I do like Amy Brown's book, "Why breastfeeding grief and trauma matter?" I think that does touch on this, particularly when someone's had a difficult start to breastfeeding and really wasn't able to meet their breastfeeding goals. But it is possible for someone to grieve the end of breastfeeding even if they did meet their breastfeeding goals. Make connections with real people. So I offer a walk in the woods service, for example, where I walk in my local woods with parents and we remember your breastfeeding experience and we celebrate it. And I know lots of other breastfeeding support people do something similar. Some people in the postnatal space will help you create a right of passage or some kind of ceremony. We're not great at those in our culture in most cases. So sometimes we need to make our own. Make a book. Make some breastfeeding jewelry, write in a journal and then revisit it later on because things will feel different in a few weeks. You're not alone. There are so many people out there online, especially, who really understand what you're going through. We understand how important breastfeeding was to you. We really get what it feels like to say goodbye to that phase of your life. So do you reach out to peer supporters? Would not peer supporters are not just there to help people with sore nipples. They're there to help people at any aspect with any aspect of their breastfeeding journey. We know what you're going through. So reach out for some help if you're struggling. As question says, how do you know when you are ready to wean? Good question. I like this list from Hillary Flour. So it's in her book Adventures in Town, Don't Nursing. She says these are the signs that a breastfeeding relationship needs adjustment. Number one, you feel yourself withdrawing from your child. Number two, you hear an irritated tone in your voice when you say yes. Number three, you feel you have no choice when it comes to nursing. Number four, you are prone to snapping at your child while breastfeeding. Number five, you are getting exasperated enough to consider weaning on the spot. This may not mean full weaning is needed, but it could suggest that you might want to start partial weaning and see how things feel. I sometimes talk about the magic wand test and I say, if I had a magic wand and I could wave it right now and your child would never want to breastfeed again, they wouldn't mind. They would simply just stop. Would you want me to wave that magic wand? And if you think, oh my god, yes please, that will be bloody fantastic, you are ready. If I say that and you go, no, actually hang on, that feels a bit fast. You know, there are some positives about breastfeeding. I'm not quite sure I'm ready to end it completely entirely. yet? Maybe you're not entirely ready, maybe some other things need to change. I would say it's worth remembering that parenting a little person is bloody hard. Do some thinking about whether it really is the breastfeeding that's hard, or is it about being needed this much? Is it about feeling overstretched and being needed to the extent that you are? It may be that breastfeeding is not necessarily the problem, it's the parenting a little person that's the problem and maybe you need some more support some other areas. It may be that after a period of reflection, it doesn't necessarily end with weaning. Next question says, is it better to wean at night first or during the day? So no rules on this one, but usually you want some daytime boundaries in place first. That's when you have the ability to offer a variety of ways to connect. You can work on your alternatives with your connection techniques, you can get them used to delays, you can get them used to the fact that mommy needs to go and get a drink of water or have a snack, you can get them used to the fact that you have needs and you have body autonomy and you have desires too. So usually a little bit of daytime conversation, a daytime boundaries first rather than jumping straight to night weaning. Next question, how do you put boundaries in place rather than stopping completely? This is really simple, you tell the truth, you say that you're happy to do milk, but first you need something to eat or you need to go to the toilet. You have agency in this situation, then you talk about how your body would like a rest and you work on offering alternatives. You explain how you are feeling in age appropriate language and as close to the truth as you can. Weaning books can help, so I like good by mommy's milk by Maria Paola Weeks. There's space in that book for parents to have feelings about breastfeeding and sometimes parents needing to do other things. So you tell the truth, you talk about yourself, if they have big feelings, you validate those feelings. You say, yeah, I know you want to feed now. I know your cross that mommy's body needs a rest. I know you're sad you can't have milk now, but we're going to cuddle now and then we can have milk later, but we need them to know that you have needs to and sometimes you do need to put a boundary in place. Next question says, how do you move away from feeding to sleep for naps? Okay, like early mornings, to be honest, this one is really tough. Truthfully, even the little scamps who sleep just fine without you at nursery may resist naps hard if you aren't breastfeeding at home. Sometimes this does mean an end to a daytime nap when breastfeeding is no longer happening. And I know that's really bad news, but I'm not going to shy away from being honest. There are lots of sort of three and a half year olds who, if the breastfeeding is not on offer, frankly, they're just not interested in having a nap and that's how napping ends. Now, sometimes tablets stacking can help with naps times too, telling a sleepy story, doing a guided meditation, having a familiar routine, talking explicitly about the fat milks going away. What do they think will help them get to sleep at nap time? Sometimes it's better not to put pressure on the necessity of falling asleep. This is just resting time. This is just quiet time. You know, you can't force someone to fall asleep and in the minute they sense that you want them to fall asleep, they're going to get even more anxious and wound up. This is a time where you can listen to a story, you can lie down, you can look through books quietly. Sometimes it's removing that pressure to sleep that actually means sleep can happen. It might also be that you're going to be moving to a buggy for a while. Maybe naps will be happening in the buggy if they're not able to happen at home. It is not unusual for a little person to just really not be interested to fall asleep without breastfeeding. And the fact that other people can get them to sleep without breastfeeding and you can't can be incredibly frustrating, but truthfully that is the reality for some children at nap time. Next question says, "How do you get another parent to be accepted by a toddler?" Okay, so this is probably a question that's a bit beyond breastfeeding, but I'll try and touch on to a little bit. It's really normal for toddlers to go through phases of apparently rejecting one parent. This is about feeling empowered and they're experimenting with their feeling of agency. Sometimes it is about fear of losing breastfeeding and they may associate the other parent getting involved more at bedtime and nap time with that loss of breastfeeding and have a slight trepidation about what's going on. But the bottom line is every individual parent is responsible for their own relationship with their child. In its about time and its about practice. So one parent, perhaps a breastfeeding mum, doesn't change what she is doing to affect her partner's relationship with their child. You might sometimes need to take some deep breaths and stay away and give the two of them space to work things out, but actually it's not your responsibility necessarily to change what's happening with your partner's relationship with your child. A parent who's historically done less parenting and less night time parenting needs to get upskilled. They need to develop their own methods and their own techniques and it takes time to build confidence. But the breastfeeding parent or chestfeeding parent doesn't diminish themselves to make that happen. We don't remove our own parenting skills. But we might sometimes need to physically remove ourselves to give the two of them time together. So we go to the evening yoga class, we go for a walk, we meet our friends, we let the other parent practice. They're going to need some time to develop their own skills. That's not something that we can take an active role in. That's something we have to step back and allow to happen. Next question says, if you're not influenced by external factors to start weaning, but know that you want to sometimes soon, are there ages and stages to avoid? Okay, so the truth is it is harder to wean when a child is preverable and it's harder if they don't understand concepts like waiting or mourning and night or sleeping. It's easier if they know what a time it means. It can be harder if they're just starting external child care nursery school. It can be harder if they're experiencing another loss, but no time is completely out of bounds if you really need to wean. You know, I'm an IBCLC, I think a lot about the value of breastfeeding older children. I've written a book about breastfeeding older children. Obviously I'm going to say don't end breastfeeding until you need to, but you know, if you can wait until your child wants to self-wean ace because that's the dream, but honestly if you can't wait until then if you need to end breastfeeding, you've got to wean at the time that feels right for you. So don't wean earlier because someone tells you that one age is harder and you've got to avoid this harder age. Don't go on beyond the point where you're feeling miserable because you're told that you should breastfeed for a particular length of time. You really have to come up with a decision that feels right for you, but I would say it's a little bit harder when other kinds of transition are happening and ideally you wouldn't want to wean, for example, at the point of starting nursery. Next question says, "I cut down to just morning and night-time feeds and then maybe one at night and then it seems to pick up again and I don't seem to be able to do anything about it, help." Okay, so if it's picking up again, it could be that you are struggling with some big feelings and you are not alone and this is true for so many of us. It is really hard, especially when we've started out with, you know, very responsive, loving, gentle attachment parenting. It's really hard to see our little people cross and unhappy. I would direct you to read about aware parenting and hand in hand parenting. I would say that you need to get to a place where you give yourself permission to hold a boundary even if there is some distress. If it is picking up again, it sounds tough to say this, but truthfully that's because you were choosing to pick it up again. Forgive yourself for that. You know, it's tough, this is hard and sometimes you know, you may take a step backwards and that's completely natural and normal. But this is parent-led weaning and parent-led weaning, as the name suggests, needs some leading from the parent. It is parent-led. That means you have to do some leading, you have to take the lead, you have to make a plan and give yourself permission to stick with it. Maybe do another review of where the asks are coming from when they're requesting a breastfeed, what's going on, what are the underlying needs, what are they asking in those moments, what else can you do to meet those needs. You may need to do a little bit more of a step back to think about where some of these asks are coming from. If there's a real escalation in asking, could be something else going on. But truthfully, sometimes you're going to have to hold a boundary, give yourself permission to hold that boundary and do some work around managing your child's big feelings. Next question says, what's the timescale for weaning? Is it one week for you know, generally talking about milk stopping one day for everybody and then maybe a second week adding in discussions about weaning, that particular child and then maybe a third week putting into practice? Or is it decreasing the frequency and amount of feeds, gradually until there's none? Okay. This question made me smile because I totally sympathise with that desire for concrete answers. Someone wants to have a very clear patent laid out and I understand why that desire comes from but really it depends on where you're starting. So a toddler who's feeding twice a day could potentially be completely weaned in a week. But a toddler who feeds throughout the day and night uses the breast to transition between every sleep cycle is going to take a lot longer to learn how else to sleep and how else their needs can be met and you are going to need to learn other ways to meet their needs. Some children will respond really well to feed getting shorter and they might like using timers to indicate feeds getting shorter. Other children do really well with location boundaries so you might say you know we only feed in the bedroom now. You need to make a plan based on where your child currently is. You know do consider reaching out to someone else to help you think through your plan. You don't have to do this alone it could be a breastfeeding support professional it could be a friend and you probably can't put a strict timetable in place until you really know how they're responding and how they're responding to you offering alternatives. But I would say generally if your child is starting from scratch and you're having to really start from the very beginning with helping them to transition between sleep cycles without the breast you're probably looking at several weeks rather than one or two weeks. What are the common myths about weaning and can you bust them? That's a big question. I hope I've addressed some of them in these previous questions and conversations. I would just say two things very often it's the fear of weaning and it's the anticipation of weaning that's the toughest phase and very often little people do better than we expect. I cannot tell you how many times one of my clients comes to me because I do a Zoom session and then I do WhatsApp support and so often the WhatsApp support when they start night weaning the first messages where well that went better than I was expecting. I'm really surprised at how easily that went or I'm really surprised at how well they've taken that and when a parent is starting weaning with a confidence when they are prepared when they've given themselves permission to move forward and our children pick up on that sense of confidence they pick up on the fact that mummy seems to know what she's doing they will often feel more relaxed themselves. Time and again parents say this has gone better than I was expecting. I would just repeat my point that only the breastfeeding parent can really make weaning happen so I think one of the really big myths around weaning is that you can step away and go and stay somewhere else and your partner can do all the work. You can't really step away and have your partner do this you can't go away on a trip that's a rupture in your relationship with a young child on top of another rupture in your relationship you know your absence. This is about trust and safety this is about you being upskilled and learning how to parent in other ways that takes practice you and your child are both working together you are both gonna have to learn how to do this world without breastfeeding. When you do go away and there are lots of times I know when parents do need to go away from the young children for work or for other reasons you know that's absolutely fine as long as you're not using that in my view as a way to try and end breastfeeding because for me that doesn't really fit with what we know about how little people's brains work and how little people's trust in us works. You might for example have a break a couple of days and then come back and begin the weaning process later on because you needed a rest because you're absolutely at breaking point and when you are away from your child your partner who ever is caring for them will look after them using different strategies and your child will be fine but going away itself for me is not really the modern way to wean an older child. Your partner can support you in a ton of different ways but too often our culture associates weaning with the parents stepping away and I think again it's coming from a place where breastfeeding is very poorly understood people are perceiving breastfeeding is being a milk delivery system when actually it's an element of your relationship with your child and it's a part of your relationship with your child takes thinking about you know it's going to be tough it's going to be really hard we're teaching our child to co-regulate in different ways we're teaching them they were there for them in different ways you know we are helping them through their first significant loss in their life in many cases this is not going to be easy but if you need to end breastfeeding if you need to practice parent-need weaning then that is the way forward as Philip Apperi the psychoanalyst said we want to choose guilt instead of resentment we do not want to continue with a breastfeeding relationship where we feel resentment for our child and anger and frustration that's not going to be a healthy place to be. Thank you very much to those of you who did send through questions as I said we have not finished talking about weaning yet we're going to talk about children who are neuro divergent or have high needs and breastfeeding is their favorite regulation tool in the world how can we approach weaning with these children how can we possibly meet their needs so we're going to have a little bit of a focus on weaning neuro divergent children coming up and I look forward to hearing from you if you've got any other further questions I might do another Q&A session in the future so do for free to message me through Instagram if you've got any questions that haven't been addressed today that you would like to be addressed in the future session. Thank you for joining me today you can find me on Instagram @emapikitibcLC and on Twitter @makesmilk it would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving your review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast this podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media