Another mother writes “How do I transition from nursing?”
Dr Sue writes:
It depends what your goal is with nursing. If you're going back to work, some people can pump where it's easy to get up from their job and go to a nursing room, and other times it's not as easy.
Your breasts are smart, they will actually do what you want them to do. By that I mean if you want to stop nursing during the day because you have a job, like I did (I could not pump while I was seeing patients), then your breast can learn to do morning and night time feedings.
What you need to do is make sure whatever you're going to want to do that you do it before you go back to work. So you don't want to do it the day before you leave. You need to plan ahead. If you need to drop a feeding, you drop a feeding, you wait two to three days till you feel more comfortable through that feeding and then you drop another feeding.
For me, personally, the last feedings I drop are the morning and night time, but that's up to everyone and it depends on their schedule. Just remember you cannot stop breastfeeding cold turkey or you'll be terribly uncomfortable.
Most babies will also take a bottle fairly readily from a nursing mother. But if you plan on nursing for the first year of life exclusively, I think it's important to start an occasional bottle within four to six weeks after the baby has been nursing well.
Not every feeding, not at the same time every day, but just to make sure that your baby will take a bottle. The hardest thing for a new mom is to have a baby who refuses a bottle because we haven't tried one for the first four months and now she's going to back to work.