Weaning - Metairie,LA

I had a major hormonal upheaval when I quickly stopped nursing my first baby, and suffered from the hot flashes and kind of like a very extreme and miserable PMS (fatigue, anxiety, down in the dumps, etc.) that I thought would never end. So when I wanted to wean my second child (four years later) I thought long and hard about how to tackle it and did it very, very gradually, which really does work! At least you are now down to about once a day and what I did when I was sure I was finally ready to quit was I went to just pumping the milk each day and putting it in with her formula. This way you can ever so slightly lessen the amount you pump each day until it gets down to like an ounce or less. Then your body won't have as much trouble shutting the milk production down and you can avoid the traumatic hormone changes. You're a great mother for nursing 11 months and I'm sure you're going to be just fine!

I had mastitis with my second child. My face was red and felt feverish during that time. Yours may not be the same thing, but if you notice your breasts becoming more painful than normal, they get hot or you get a fever, call your OB. The flushed feeling and redness could just be hormonal like you said, but I wanted you to have the other info on mastitis just in case. Hope I helped a little and you get better soon.

A.

If you could slow down the weaning process, it won't be such a shock for your body. I had to wean one of my children abruptly due to a medical problem and I had to use ice packs for a few days on my breasts and just put up with the hot flashes for a week or two. It will pass. You might find yourself being rather hormonal and emotional for a while, because breast feeding releases hormones that give a feeling of well being and calmness. Just remember to still hold your baby a lot. If you baby a baby when s/he is a baby, you won't have to baby him/her the rest of his/her life!

yes, this can be related to hormones. As you wean, the prolactin levels adn other hormones involved in producing milk change. It is especially noticeable when you wean quickly or abruptly.