Month 17: Weaning War...Conclusion

Finally, I am writing about how I weaned Xuan. This has been a long journey (therefore this would be a loooooooong post), beginning when Xuan was 7 months old and thwarted all our efforts to get her to drink from a bottle. The Bottle Battle resulted in a score of Xuan 1: Mummy 0. And again, when Xuan was 13 months she refused all the various formulas we tried to introduce. The Formula Fight score was Xuan 2: Mummy 0. The outcome of weaning Xuan did not bode well for me. Luckily, over the past couple of months, Xuan has started drinking cow’s milk from her sippy cup. She has slowly increased her milk intake from 2 oz/day to between 12 to 15oz/day. Current score is Xuan 2: Mummy 1.



Ultimately though, what I really want to win is the Weaning War. And this is definitely the hardest challenge so far. You see, Xuan only knows how to go to sleep by breastfeeding to sleep. As she doesn’t know how to fall asleep by herself, every time she wakes up in the middle of the night, which happens 2 – 4 times a night, the only way I can get her to go back to sleep is by breastfeeding her. The main reason I want to wean is because I think she can benefit from a better night of sleep, and who am I kidding, I could certainly benefit from a better night of sleep, after being sleep deprived for more than a year. So before I can even wean Xuan, what I really need to do, is to teach her to fall asleep by herself.


The good thing was, since Xuan turned one, I had noticed that there were a few times when she actually fell asleep by herself after she stopped breastfeeding. This did not happen often, maybe only two nights a month, but it was definitely an improvement. There were also a few nights when she slept 7 – 9 hours without waking up. Maybe weaning Xuan before she goes to college will not be impossible afterall!


After obsessing and thinking about this for a long time, I finally decided to set a target of mid-June to wean X. From end of April to mid-June, I would try various methods to teach Xuan to fall asleep without breastfeeding. If all else fails, I asked H to take one week of leave in mid-June, in anticipation that we would need to sleep train Xuan and let her cry-it-out, as a last resort. I doubt that any of us would get much sleep during the first few nights, and we would need to help each other out to get through the days.


I also decided to email Nicole from The Baby Sleep Site (https://www.babysleepsite.com/) for help. I had been reading the sleep articles from this website for a few months now, and I like the philosophy of how she tailors sleep training to suit each individual baby, parent and situation without any judgements. Nicole reverted to me with a Sleep Plan.


Summary of Sleep Plan:
Nights 1-3: Work on bedtime for her to fall asleep on her own. Can nurse to sleep but not all the way to sleep. If she cries, try to soothe her to sleep by patting, shushing, to stop crying.
Nights 4-7: Work on night-wakings with just one feeding. She goes back to sleep on her own for all others.
Nights 8-14: Start moving the one feeding later and later by 30 minutes until she is no longer eating at night at all.
Nights 15-21: Start working on naps, first focusing on going to sleep at nap time and then going back to sleep and napping her full time.
Day 22+: Start weaning completely starting with one feeding every 3-4 days or so.


Nicole’s plan was quite long, but it was something that I was comfortable with as I felt it was achievable. More importantly, she took into consideration my uneasiness of letting Xuan cry at night due to my low tolerance for her crying . We also live in a townhouse and I vary of keeping the neighbours up all night with Xuan’s crying.


Once I started, this was how things actually turned out:


29 Apr to 4 May: I did Xuan’s bedtime routine of yoghurt, diaper change, wipe down, pajamas and breastfeed. I stopped breastfeeding her before she fell asleep. She tossed and turned with periodic bouts of crying and fell asleep herself within 10 minutes. Xuan still woke up 2 – 4 times in the middle of the night, and I would breastfeed her to put her back to sleep. I was surprised that it was not that difficult to get Xuan to fall sleep off the breast, but I was beginning to think that the really difficult part would be getting her to go back to sleep in the middle of the night.


5 May to 7 May: Since Xuan was learning to fall asleep after I stop breastfeeding her to sleep at bedtime, I decided to try the same for naps, just to see how she would take it. I remember the first day I did it, she played a little after I stopped and then she started to cry. I pretended to sleep and lay down next to her, but facing away from her. Poor Xuan cried for 10 minutes and when I finally relented, I turned my face towards her, and she immediately quiet down. While I softly stroked her face, she just closed her eyes and fell asleep within seconds. This reinforced my belief that cry-it-out would not work for Xuan, If I leave her to fall asleep in the room by herself, she would go berserk and cry non-stop. When I stay in the room with her, I can help her fall asleep by soothing her in other ways.


8 May to 13 May: On 8 May, Xuan gave me the best Mother’s Day gift present. She fell asleep at night without breastfeeding AT ALL, and she SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT for 10 hours without waking up! I was so proud of her! After this, Xuan would fall asleep by herself at night without breastfeeding.


14 May to 17 May: Xuan had a 2 hour long tantrum on 14 May. When her naptime came, I was so exhausted from dealing with her tantrum, I fell asleep before Xuan did. When I woke up, Xuan had fallen asleep on my legs. This was the first time she fell asleep by herself at naptime without breastfeeding. The next day, Xuan’s tantrum terror continued during a trip back to H’s hometown to visit his parents. Xuan had so much fun the whole day with her grandparents and aunt that she refused to take her nap. At bedtime, she kept crying and crying in the room until I relented and decided to breastfeed her. She didn’t want to feed and kept crying. I was afraid she was ill. Finally, H figured out that our devious little girl wanted to go outside where all the action was. By that time, everyone had gone to bed. So I took Xuan out to the living room to show her that there was nobody there and it was all dark. When I asked her what she wanted to do, she pointed back to the bedroom. Finally, she fell asleep after that. The next couple of nights were also challenging as Xuan threw tantrums during bedtime lasting up to an hour. One night she didn’t want to wear her pajamas, and another night she just didn’t want to stop playing.


18 May to 31 May: By now, Xuan can fall asleep herself for naps and bedtime without breastfeeding. A couple of times, she even fell asleep in her highchair. I knew she was tired and I was trying to finish washing the lunch dishes. In the short 5 minutes it took me to wash the dishes, I turned around and Xuan had fallen asleep in her highchair! The sleep quality of her naps also improved as she can consistently sleep for 1.5 to 2.5 hours by herself. Previously, she would wake up 1 – 2 times within a 1 to 2 hour nap and need me to breastfeed her back to sleep.


Previously, Xuan would wake up 2 – 4 times a night and I needed to breastfeed her back to sleep. Nicole’s Sleep Plan had included a part where I was to delay breastfeeding Xuan by 30 minutes every night, when she woke up at night so that she would eventually learn to fall back asleep herself and sleep through the night. Fortunately, I didn’t have to consciously do this as once Xuan figured out how to fall asleep herself, she naturally began to sleep longer and longer and woke up less often. Soon she was only waking up once around 5am, and this gradually became later and later in the morning.


Towards the end of May, I had reduced the number of breastfeeds down to just the morning feed when Xuan wakes up. I still fed her, partly due to her frantic cries of “mama, mama!” At the very end, I also wanted to savour her closeness, touch her silky smooth cheeks and soft curls. Afterall, I also wanted to remember some good memories of breastfeeding Xuan.


31 May was the last day I breastfed Xuan. Xuan is finally weaned! I am so proud of my baby for weaning so well. I did not ever imagine that I could wean her with the minimum of tears, both hers and mine. I am also proud of myself, for being so disciplined and for sticking to the plan. In truth, I was afraid I would crumble and give up if it turned out to be too hard on Xuan. In fact, I had managed to wean Xuan earlier than the plan Nicole laid out for us. I would attribute this success to knowing Xuan’s temperament well, recognising that she was starting the self-soothe and building on that, and also Nicole’s Sleep Plan and encouragement. I need to add, that I am so, so happy, to be reacquainted with my long lost friend called “Sleep”! Now that I manage a decent 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep at night, I feel like a brand new mother.


Luckily for H, Xuan was weaned well before his week long holiday in mid-June. He did not have to suffer nights of sleep deprivation listening to Xuan cry (which would have been the worst holiday ever, in my books). Instead, we had a lovely holiday just chilling at home, enjoying some outings, catching up with friends, attended a couple of weddings, and even took Xuan to the Zoo.


As you have probably figured out, breastfeeding has been a constant source of struggle for me since the beginning. In the beginning, I was told not to have formula in the house and that colostrums was enough for the baby. Poor Xuan spent her first night at home crying from hunger. When Xuan was on formula, I tried all sorts of things (papaya soup, fenugreek, lots of pumping) to increase my milk supply so that she would be exclusively on breastmilk. I also delayed introducing the bottle to her as I was afraid she would get nipple confusion. Although I did not have common breastfeeding problems such as mastitis, sore nipples, I had another problem, a baby who only wanted my boob 24 hours, 7 days and nights a week.


By the time Xuan was one year old, I was desperate to wean but she refused to drink from the bottle and refused to drink formula. I was seriously sleep-deprived from existing on 3-4 hour stretches of sleep for more than a year. I was also resenting breastfeeding and dreading weaning (and the accompanying crying) at the same time. I even told H that I would not breastfeed our next child (if we have another child, currently Xuan is four handfuls).


In the end, weaning was not as bad as the nightmare I had built it up to be. But now that I have gone through this breastfeeding and weaning experience, there are some things that I would definitely do differently next time:


(1) Feed the poor hungry newborn baby formula if my milk has not come in
(2) Feed the baby from a bottle at least once a day (to ensure baby doesn’t reject the bottle and so that someone else can feed the baby)
(3) Be open to feeding the baby formula once a day, preferably at night (to help the baby become accustomed to drinking formula and also help baby sleep longer at night)
(4) Get someone else to help put baby to sleep
(5) Help baby to fall asleep herself/himself without relying on feeding


Thank goodness, this would be my last post on breastfeeding and weaning!  And I will end this post World Cup style, our final score is Xuan 2:  Mummy 2, both baby and mummy win!