by Christobel Rajesh

Created on: February 11, 2008   Last Updated: June 24, 2008

When the mother or the baby decide to stop breast feeding, feeds should be tailed off gradually and not stopped abruptly. The process of stopping breast feeds is known as weaning. Babies should be exclusively breast fed for 4-6 months. Breast milk exactly meets the nutritional needs of the baby up to 6 months and then the baby has to be started on supplementary foods. This is done very slowly and carefully.The infant is tapered from the well adapted breast feeds by starting slowly on additional feeds. This means that the mother feeds something additional just before breast feeding especially in the mid-morning and lunch time periods. This is because the child will be cranky when he wakes up and will need the mother to be beside him and feed him. Likewise children want to be breast fed before going to bed to ensure safety and trust feeling. Giving them additional feeds just before breast feeding reduces the child's appetite for breast feeds and also prevents stimulation of the breast to suppress milk production.

Weaning from the breast can be done by even omitting breast feeds or spacing them further apart. The additional feeds should be started one at a time. This will help the mother to decide if the child is allergic to a particular food and whether the child likes the food. The child's likes and dislikes should be considered and they must not be forced to eat anything which they don't like. The food must be a part of the family's normal menu, so that the child eats one third of what his parents eat by the end of one year.

To stop breast feeding, the mother can start the child with some liquids preferably like cow's milk or formula feeds. Then, once the child is used to taking them, she can start on other liquids like clear soup, clear juices and then go on to thick liquids like milk shakes, chicken broth and vegetable juice. When the child is fully accustomed to liquid diet, she can move on to semi-solid diets by skipping breast feeding. Semi-solid foods include mashed potatoes or carrot, rice or ragi porridge, half boiled egg or bulls eye depending upon the child's likes.

The next step is giving them soft solids like pan cakes, pasta, cakes, muffins, cookies, chocolates which will fill their stomach and make them forget breast feeds for a while. Now the breast feeds can be continued only on demand. The last step is, starting on the normal solid diet as an adult, which most children take without any problem by their first birthday. Breast feeds can be completely stopped now.

The period of weaning is very crucial because the children try to dodge so much and the mother or the caretaker get frustrated very easily. This may lead to malnutrition in some children when not weaned properly. It is good to breast feed when the baby is sick even during the time of weaning. Breast feeds can be continued through out the period of weaning but the frequency should be gradually decreased. This way mother will not be stimulated frequently and the milk production will thereby decrease. Thus breastfeeding can be stopped completely without any bad effect on both the mother and the child.

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