You know what most breastfeeding mom fear most? It's when their baby is addicted to the breast and refuse to wean off. I know of one mom whose kid is still refusing to wean after 2 years old. I'm not against moms who prefer to breastfeed longer than 2 years old but personally I felt quite tired of going to the pump room every day to express my milk after 1 year old. And to bump into well meaning people who said 'Oh.. you're still doing it? That's good.. That's good...' Well... it's good if you're enjoying it. It's not when you start to dread it.
So about 17 months, I decided I will stop expressing milk in the daytime. Ivan is not that supportive of it, in fact he always make me feel guilty about stopping, but I'm so determined to ignore him this time :P It's quite a feeling when you know it's your last time to pump. You hold the pump and the bottle and knowing this will be the last. And after that, when you start seeing all your preciously stored bottles disappearing one by one in the fridge... well.. it's kind of sad. But I know it's time to move on.
The suprising thing is, Valerie doesn't seem to miss the breasts at all! For the last 4 months, I have been mixing 3 oz of bm and 3oz of Frisolac Comfort for her afternoon feed. Thankfully she took them without much fuss. Then slowly, I reduce the bm ratio and increasing the formula ratio. So by 17 months, it was like 1 oz of bm and 5 oz of formula. So making 6oz of full formula, she just took them, probably not noticing mommy's milk is no longer in it. :D
Then at night, I was still breastfeeding her, as a consolation to both myself and Ivan. But after 2 week or so, I decided to give her a 5oz formula before sleeping and she gulped it down and still can breastfeed! So I was thinking, have I been starving her all this while? She could actually take it more!
And the amazing thing is, the more doses of Frisolac Comfort I feed her, the more frequent her poo is and softer too. So I start to realise that the formula really does work for constipated baby, it's just that I wasn't feeding her frequent enough. In the end, I also fed her formula in the morning. And I have to tell you, her constipation just disappeared!! Can you imagine that, all the tears and struggles for the last 10 months just gone. No more forcing her to drink more water, or eat more fruits or hi fibre stuff. The problem is solved!
Have I known that earlier, I would have stop breastfeeing at 12 months.. Gosh... So what's remain is the middle of the night nibble. Valerie still likes to wake up every 3-4 hrs to suck and I'm so sure she's not hungry. I'm also getting annoyed that I've not had a sleep through the night that most parents already enjoy by this age.
So at 18 months, this is the final decision. To stop breastfeeding completely since she's waking up out of habit to nibble. The first night she woke up abt 3am, I just pat her, carry her, hold her to sleep. And did she put up a fight! She cried and cried for half an hour, eventually no milk so she went back to sleep. I was prepared it would be worse the next day.
The next night, she woke up about 4.30am, I gave her water, she took it and then she said 'Nen Nen'. So we made her a 3oz bottle and she gulped it down without struggling and went back to sleep. And then things start to get better, she wakes up later and later each day that she wakes up at 6.30am. Now that is what I call sleeping :D :D
For the past few days, things have been good. Valerie has not even woken up at 6.30am for her mini milk feed, she just sleep straight till 8.30am. So we've done it. Yey... Valerie is completely weaned from the breasts, no longer constipated, has gained a lot of weight and is finally, sleeping through the night.
So if you ask me which is better, breast milk or formula? I personally think formula from 12 months onwards... This is saying from experience :P
