Bye Bye Boobies

I last posted on 10 April and so much has changed in the last 132 days, that I don’t know where to start! Rather than one huge blog post about updates on breastfeeding, sleep and Charlie’s HD, I’m going to do three separate posts. Then hopefully now that I’m getting a little bit more sleep (at last!!) I’ll be able to get back into the swing of posting a bit more about Charlie’s HD.

First up and the biggest change for me over the last four months has been that Charlie is totally weaned from breastfeeding. Charlie now says "bye bye boobies" as he knows he no longer gets them but obviously still is attached and comforted by the notion. Looking back, I did enjoy breastfeeding Charlie and it was ultimately the best decision I made for his HD, but after 19months of constant feeding through the night, I was ready to stop as I had never planned on feeding him for that length of time.

We started by dropping the later night feeds one at a time. This meant that for a few nights any feeds after 3am, Davy went into Charlie. Then once this feed was dropped, any feeds after 12midnight onwards, Davy went into Charlie and then eventually we went with any feeds after 11pm onwards Davy would go into Charlie.

Initially Charlie was not happy with this new arrangement and Davy had to endure 2-3 nights of constant crying and screaming while he held Charlie, rubbed his back and tried to console him. We decided a substitute would maybe make it easier for them both, but what?! Charlie was over one so there was no point trying a bottle of milk and he only drank water from his sippy cup but refused this at nights, so we decided on yoghurts. Charlie would live off yoghurts if we let him, he loves them!!

We thought we had cracked the night wakening’s and a way of settling Charlie off quickly. Davy would give Charlie a couple of mouthfuls of yoghurt when he would wake and off to sleep Charlie would go. So we quickly moved onto weaning Charlie off the final feed at bedtime around 8pm. This meant Davy would have to settle him off to sleep and as it had always been me up to this point, we were at a loss as to how this would go or what we should do.

Charlie loved his pram and would regularly fall asleep in his pram on walks, so we brought it upstairs and Davy rocked him to sleep and then lifted him into his bed. When he would waken through the night, he would be given yoghurt and eventually fall asleep. Charlie was still wakening about 5-6 times a night and before long it was taking more and more yoghurt to settle him off to sleep. To the point Charlie was polishing off full yoghurts at night and then crying when they were done wanting more. We had created a yoghurt monster at night and were still getting no sleep!

The only silver lining through all of the sleep deprived nights and crying from both Charlie and myself was that Charlie was now completely weaned. If I’m totally honest, I was delighted and relieved all at once. I was beginning to resent the night feeding and constant clawing at my top and bra. I was also surprised that the whole process had not been as harrowing as I’d expected. We’d dropped the night feeds slowly over a month and then the final night feed had taken just over a week to drop.

We thought once we had weaned Charlie from breastfeeding, he might start to sleep better, but we slowly realised we had simply substituted breastfeeding with bad habits of pram rocking and yoghurt munching and so we were still sleep deprived and up at least 5-6times a night!

We now had to work on how to get Charlie to sleep without being rocked in the pram and being fed multiple yoghurts to settle back to sleep!

Xx