Weaning your Child: The Ultimate Guide for New Mothers

A newborn passes through many stages in their life and one of them is weaning. Before moving on to weaning tips it is important that we understand the meaning of weaning and its basics.

Definition-weaning

Weaning is nothing but the period when the child’s diet experiences a shift from breast milk to the other more solid or maybe liquid sources of nutritious food. Weaning your child is an important process because it develops the essential food habits of the child and moreover, a mother needs to be very patient as the process can be time taking and requires you to develop an understanding with the child.

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The accurate time to wean:

The accurate time of wean largely depends on the mother, she can shift the child to another liquid but not before the period of six months. If the mother is influenced by the need to return to work she needs to maintain a weaning schedule. Sometimes you just know that the time is right to do something and the same goes for weaning.

Experts all over the world believe that the child should be feed with the breast milk only for the first six months and later on, for other six months should be feed with solid food mixed with breast milk and after one year the child can shift on to cow milk.

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You cannot exactly say when the right time is because there are different views about it. It is believed that the mother should breastfeed the baby until both of them are ready for the weaning schedule. The World Health Organization says that the mother could breastfeed her child to two years.

Weaning your child does not mean that you completely have to stop breastfeeding, other than stopping the process completely some mothers prefer to feed solids in the morning and go for breastfeeding at night.

One of the weaning tips is that the baby may not be ready when you are trying to go for the process or the baby might try to go into the process early than the mother’s desires to. In both cases, you need to develop an understanding with the child, try to take it slow and consider the needs of both the parties.

Your baby might give you signs when he or she is ready for weaning and this might also help you to take your time and get ready for the process. Let’s look at some of these signs that might also help in weaning your child in a better way.

1. The foremost indication is that the child starts to lose interest while you are feeding him or her.
2. You will observe that you need to nurse the child for a shorter period as compared to earlier times.
3. The other basic indication is that the child would easily get distracted towards other sounds and tries to peep in other things.
4. The other thing could be that the child becomes more playful while breastfeeding and bitting or pulling off and on. It is important that you immediately stop feeding and make the child understand that biting hurts you, he or she should not do it.
5. They baby might just be looking for the mother’s comfort and just sucks the breast without actually drawing out the milk.

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Shifting to the process of weaning

It is very essential that when you are planning to shift onto the weaning schedule the mother and child both should be mentally and physically adaptable to the change.

One can consider various ways to shift to the process slowly and gradually. One can be that you stop one of the breastfeeding sessions in the week and instead feed on the bottle or a cup. Weaning your child can also be easy if you regularly start dropping the number of breasts feed and thereby the child becomes habitual to it.

Another one from the weaning tips says that the shortest and inconvenient time of breastfeeding is in the day whereas the night time is the time of bonding between the mother and the child therefore for the first you can stop breastfeeding the child in the afternoons.

There are mothers that leave the weaning schedule to the child and slowly and gradually when the child is ready he or she automatically shifts to solid food and in such it is important for you to take care that the child is getting all the necessary nutrients, vitamins and minerals in the food that the child is eating especially iron and calcium.

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The third from the weaning tips is that in case if your child shifts on to weaning in less than a year and your body stops producing the milk you might need to shift onto formula milk. Although you need to consult the doctor of formula milk is healthy for the baby or not.

Follow the following steps to make the shifting easy when you consider weaning your child:

1. Try to take the child’s mind on to other things such as games or another attractive item when its time of usual breastfeeding.
2. The best way to do so would be if you avoid the places at the time where you usually feed the child and also try not to wear the clothes you wear at the time of feeding.
3. Weaning your child might not be a good idea when they are teething because they are already trying to adopt some new changes and one more might not be handled well by them.
4. You can shift on to the weaning schedule by initiating the process early after six months of breastfeeding. This you can start by feeding the child with a bottle or cup along with the normal feeding. For an older child, it becomes difficult to shift on to these things as the child becomes more resistant.
5. You can also take the help of your partner to distract the child.