Hi guys and welcome back to my channel. I'm sorry if this is distracting. Baby! This baby. The baby is playing with a mirror. Today I'm going to share with you my weaning experience and how I weaned Rosalie. After breastfeeding for 16 months I weaned her in a month and a half time, which is was shocking to me that it was that simple. I guess I'll give you a little bit of background. breastfeeding was very very painful for me and that's because Rosalie has a tongue and lip side but I didn't find that out until about a week and a half ago. So that explains a lot as to why breastfeeding hurt so bad. The reason why I believe that's relevant now is because my milk supply started decreasing very drastically because Rosalie started eating solids but I also believe it's because she had a less than sufficient latch because of her tongue and lip time. So my milk supply started decreasing and she was just comfort nursing. Three times when she woke up in the morning before her nap and then before night time, before bedtime. She was really just comfort nursing and she was comfort nursing for a long time and I knew she was hardly getting any milk out of it and I just felt like I was just done. I was just ready to be done and if you feel that way too, it's okay to feel that way. Oh really? You need to do what's best for you. Definitely don't do anything that's going to scar your baby for life. Rosalie was 16 months old and so I was like I think it's going to be safe to wean. She's eating solids through the cell by herself. I'm hardly producing anything and I am just drawn. I'm ready to not be the only one who can put her to sleep at night because she was nursing to sleep and I knew that the first step to that for us would be to wean her. How we began weaning was we started with the morning feeding and I think I started off not really intentionally weaning. I just knew that I wanted to breastfeed less so I figured a good way to do that would just be to start with the morning feeding and I just replaced it with like singing, reading books, playing with toys, snuggling, just things that are still going to be close to you but and your baby still wants to feel close to you and bond with you but not over breastfeeding. So I didn't put a time frame on like when she was going to be just completely done with that morning feeding. If she was actually freaking out and really really needed a feeding in the morning then I would let her nurse in the morning like if she would go stand at our bedroom door because that's where she sleeps she co-sleeves with us so if she was banging on that door like saying eat eat eat like she wants to go lay down and bed and nurse and she wouldn't give it up. I would go nurse her and so for that reason I think she didn't feel pressured or rushed because I didn't put a time frame on cutting out that first feeding but I would say it took about a month for her to be completely comfortable with no morning feeding and she would just get up normally and we would go play and she wouldn't fuss wine or even notice that we cut it out and that there wasn't feeding there and then it was really crazy because the last two feedings dropped within like a week and a half and it honestly happened a lot faster than I thought it would. I didn't expect it to go as smooth as it did. Next I cut out the nap feed. I'd say we went about a week without the nap time feeding and then at that point we cut out the nighttime feed and then from then on we just didn't nurse anymore and that's what happened. It's just crazy like I'm so shocked and she did fine with it. I think half a battle is just starting and going into it with patience knowing that it's going to take extra time, extra comforting and soothing before bed to get them to relax. For Rosalie the thing that comforted her was tickling her feet and singing to her or just tickling her and the beginning it took her a while to get used to that and it took her a while to settle down and kind of learn how to self-suit but after she figured it out now we're just like in such a wonderful place. I think if you just go into it with an abundance of patience and knowing what to expect, knowing to expect tears and frustration if you know those things are coming your way and just to take a deep breath and be patient with them. Don't be forceful about it and especially do not get frustrated when you're in the moment because your baby can get more upset and feel can sense that distance from you and therefore they're going to want to nurse even more to stay close to you and fear that you're going to leave them or the fact that you upset with them is going to make them want to be closer to you and nurse because of that frustration and because of that those negative emotions that you're exuding. I know that sounds corny but it's true they can sense that they're just regular little humans because you can sense when someone you're talking to is frustrated or mad it's the same with your baby. So long story short my number one tip is just patience. Don't go into it with like a time frame in mind. Don't go into it with expectations for your baby then you might wind up disappointed and then you're both just going to be frustrated and then you're not going to get the results you want which is to have your body back to yourself because I can't even explain the relief that that is to have your body back after extended breastfeeding but I really just want to encourage you because if you feel like it's going to be impossible and it's going to scar your child and it's going to be horrible to wean I felt the same way and I just I thought it was going to be a horrible experience but um definitely go into it with a positive outlook and don't be stressed because the baby will sense that. So a few things you can look for or kind of expect with weaning um things that I experienced when my milk dropped I felt like just really kind of sad and almost a little bit depressed and I was trying to figure out like why I was feeling this way and I just kind of googled it and tried to like see if my weaning or my drop in milk supply could have anything to do with my mood and I read something that said your prolactin and your oxytocin levels are higher when your breastfeeding because prolactin helps with lactating and oxytocin is also produced when your breastfeeding and so prolactin is a calming and a relaxing hormone and oxytocin is called like the love hormone so a drop in those hormone levels can make you experience like sadness or depression so that that would be referred to as weaning depression which is a real thing and I did experience that when my milk supply started dropping another thing that I have experienced after quitting breastfeeding is weight gain. I didn't expect this to happen because I'm an avid weightlifter and fitness person if you look at any of my other videos you will definitely know that my channel is dedicated to fitness my ego took a huge hit because I had lost a lot of weight plus part of them and so yeah I got a big old bash to the ego and now I'm gonna have to kind of readjust my portion sizes because when your breastfeeding you're incredibly hungry and I I adjusted my portion sizes accordingly so now I'm gonna have to cut back on the amount of food I'm eating for meal and kind of relearn what works for my body because I am now not burning 500 extra calories a day thank you so much for watching this video I hope it was informative and helpful if you enjoyed this oh yes low I really hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel if you're new my goal for my channel is to help my subbies become their healthiest and most thriving selves so if that's something that you're interested in learning more about please subscribe and check out my other videos all right thanks so much for watching bye bye