Hi

My 10mth DD has been fully breastfed. I want to slowly wean her to drink milk from a cup.

She has 3 milk feeds, the middle of the day feed she has no problems using a cup.

She usually wakes early 5 or 6am but will fall asleep whilst she has a breast feed and sleeps til 7:30-8:00am. What should I do if I want to stop giving her morning breastfeed ? I'm dreading that she'll end up fully awake before the crack of dawn without her breastfeed.

I was hoping she would stop waking at that time but its been going on for 2-3months. Should I give her a cup of milk & hope she'll go back to sleep, but I think they find the breast more comforting than a cup.

Do other bubs tend to have this early morning feed then a snooze ?

Alice

I guess you just have to try it! If she finds the cup OK during the day, maybe she is used to it enough that it won't be too much of a shock in the morning. Perhaps if you feed her with the cup in her bedroom/your bed/wherever she sleeps and keep the lights low, it might be OK.

I guess the long term solution is to try to get her sleeping longer? Or, get up and start the day early if you really want it to be a cup. We get up and start the day at 6 am which I actually really enjoy because I can get so much done in the morning, but as the days get shorter it certainly isn't as much fun.

Good luck.

Karen

PS. I answered this mostly to bump you up, hope there are some more helpful replies.

My DS used to wake at 3.30am and nothing I could do would get him back to sleep so this is when he would get his first feed. It would get him back to sleep until around 5.30. I dreaded giving it up as I thought he'd be up at 3.30am. I just decided one day to see what he would do if I didn't get up when I heard him wake and after about 5 minutes of calling out to me he lay down and went back to sleep until 5. The next day he just slept straight through until 5 and he's continued to do that for a couple of months. Recently he started waking at 4.45 much to my horror. A couple of days ago I said to my DH that I wasn't getting DS out of bed until it was at least 5.00 and what do you know...he went back to sleep until 6.30 and has continued to this for a week now.

I say just go for it and see what she does without that feed. If you replace it she'll just keep waking up at that time out of habit. If you don't replace it she may start sleeping in until 7 or so.

All the best.