Transition Plan to Milk, Nursing, and Pumping

[marymoo86]

Trying to remember how I handled this with DD1 and not succeeding well :)

Will begin shortly to transition DD2 to coconut milk. She already drinks BM cold out of a straw cup so hoping this transition will not be hard. Planning on gradually adding it by increasing the coconut milk and decreasing the BM over the next month or so. I have a decent amount of freezer stash too.

Tricky part is how and when to drop the pumping sessions. Right now at 3 times per day and need to adjust. Thinking to drop the late afternoon pump and start morning pump later and move back the lunchtime pump later to compensate and let my body adjust for a couple of weeks. Then drop another session ( morning?) - adjust again. Then hopefully drop the last.

Anyone have good suggestions about how to handle both of these? Adjust pumping first then move to the milk transition? I want to maximize use of my freezer stash so guessing I need to use it to transition and freeze the newly expressed in smaller increments?

Will keep nursing in the evening/night/mornings and weekends.

I hope this has made sense :D

[Liziz]

Personally, I wouldn't drop a pumping session until you've almost completely transitioned away from BM. For me, my supply was very impacted by pumping sessions, and so I wouldn't drop it until I felt like I didn't "need" the BM any more. If you get her successfully transitioned and still have extra BM, you can always use it to make her cereal, or just keep mixing w/ the milk in small increments, etc. so it doesn't go to waste. I'd rather have the problem of using it up instead of not having enough! But, it sounds like you have a much stronger supply than I did, so responses from others may be more helpful than mine!

[ncat]

I stopped pumping just shy of 12 months for both DS1 and 2. I had pumped 2X daily at work for most of their first years, and dropped to 1X over the last month of pumping. I used up most of my freezer stash at the time I stopped pumping. For all 3 DCs, I introduced cow milk at about a year, and backed off on the nursing as they drank more with meals. I am still nursing DS2 3X a day, 4X on weekends and days he is not in daycare.