Complementary foods should normally be started when a child is 6 months old. These may be started any time after 6 months of age, however, if the child is not growing satisfactorily. Good weaning practices involve selecting nutritious foods and using hygienic practices when preparing them.

The choice of complementary foods will depend on local patterns of diet and agriculture, as well as on existing beliefs and practices. In addition to breast milk (or animal milk), soft mashed foods (e.g. cereals) should be given, to which some vegetable oil (510 ml/serving) has been added.

Other foods, such as well cooked pulses and vegetables, should be given as the diet is expanded. When possible, eggs, meat, fish and fruit should be also given.

Related Reading

• When is it time to stop breastfeeding?
• Five Signs the Time to Wean has come
• Starting Solid Foods
• A Brief History of Weaning
• 10 Reasons to Think Twice about Weaning
• Is it OK to let my baby breastfeed for comfort?
• How long should I breastfeed?

The family plays a major role in the breastfeeding relationship between you and your baby. One of the most precious gifts a family can give is to take care of you and encourage and support a healthy breastfeeding relationship.

For example, family members can do the many household tasks that take your energy away from nursing the baby. They can also call your health care provider or look in the phone book for community breastfeeding (lactation) resources if you have any problems breastfeeding once you get home.

There are many rewarding ways for family members to be involved in caring for the baby. Burping, diapering, playing, giving the baby massages, comforting (holding and rocking, etc.) and taking the baby for a walk are wonderful ways to help. They are also a good way to get to know the baby. Bath time is a great opportunity for eye contact and play for the whole family.

As the mother, having people help and encourage you are some of the most important things you will need to breastfeed successfully. The first few weeks of breastfeeding are important. It is a time for learning what works best for you and your baby. It is also when your milk supply is being established. It can be a very frustrating time as well. You have just gone through labor and delivery and may be physically tired and emotionally drained. You and your baby may need to try several breastfeeding positions before you find ones that work. With strong support from family, friends, health professionals and volunteer counselors, mothers who may otherwise have given up on breastfeeding during the first weeks are able to succeed.

A good support network can help in many ways, such as providing accurate information about breastfeeding and helping you resolve any problems quickly. By doing other “duties,” your support network enables you to put all your energy into breastfeeding and getting to know your baby. Most important, they can help you feel confident in your ability to breastfeed your baby.

The most important support person for most new mothers is their husband or partner. Other support persons may include your mother or mother-in-law, other family members, friends who have breastfed, and health professionals, such as your physician, midwife, pediatrician or lactation consultant. Volunteer counselors from the Nursing Mothers Counsel, LaLeche League, WIC and other local breastfeeding support groups are also great resources.

How can your family and friends provide the best support for you?
The best thing they can do is to attend a breastfeeding class with you. In this class, they will learn about the benefits of breastfeeding, how to establish a good milk supply, and how to manage common breastfeeding problems. Your own mother may or may not have breastfed you. Either way, she can learn new things from a breastfeeding class, as there is a lot of new information on breastfeeding and its benefits. Sometimes even well-meaning family and friends can put your milk supply at risk by giving your baby bottles and pacifiers or advising you to limit nursing time or to “get the baby on a schedule.” The more your partner and family know about breastfeeding, the more they can help you.

It is very important for your support people to provide encouragement and emotional support during the first days when you and your baby are learning how to breastfeed. Many mothers decide to give up on breastfeeding during this period. Remember that it will take time for both you and your baby to get comfortable with breastfeeding. Even if you have breastfed before, each baby is different. You and your baby will learn what works best for the two of you during the first several days or a week or two together.

Your support people can help you with other household tasks, such as cleaning, laundry, shopping and cooking. Physical fatigue from trying to do too much can affect your milk supply. Nap when your baby sleeps to help in your physical recovery. Some women feel “low” or “depressed” after delivery. Exhaustion can make this feeling worse. Let others do things for you. Only you can breastfeed your baby. You should put all of your energy into recovering from your delivery, breastfeeding and getting to know your baby.

Finally, you and your partner should both be patient about resuming intimacy. You may temporarily lose interest in having sex after giving birth. This is common and can happen whether or not you are breastfeeding. You may have concerns and negative feelings about your body after pregnancy and delivery. Breastfeeding does not “ruin your breasts.” Although you may experience breast changes after childbirth, these changes were caused by pregnancy, not by breastfeeding. Breastfeeding does not make you gain weight. In fact, it may make it easier to lose your pregnancy weight when combined with proper diet and moderate exercise.

Related Reading

• Build Your Breastfeeding Support Network
• Breastfeeding – La Leche League International
• How to create a supportive breastfeeding environment
• Preparing to breastfeed
• Myths about giving up breastfeeding

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Here are some easy steps to try when you seek how to stop breastfeeding:

1.Feed one less time a day. Try and choose the least effective breastfeeding session and offer a sippy cup. A good transition is to use breast milk in the sippy cup.

2. Be consistent. When you breastfeed continue to do so in your and your child’s regular settings. When you offer the sippy cup choose a different setting.

3. Wean Yourself. Your body has become a “milk factory” and it is time to slow down production. Stay aware of the change in your milk production, if your breasts are feeling full, leaky, or hard you may wish to pump or express some milk. Do not go so far as to feel the “let down” or totally empty your breasts as that will only continue your milk production at the same level.

Related Reading

• When is it time to stop breastfeeding?
• 10 Reasons to Think Twice about Weaning

Breastfeeding success has nothing to do with the size of your breasts or nipples. Breast size is an inherited trait and determined by the number of fat cells you have. The breasts will enlarge with pregnancy and breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a supply-and-demand process. Therefore, the more you nurse, the more milk you produce!

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Provides Initial Immunization. Breastmilk, especially the first milk (colostrum), contains anti-bacterial and anti-viral agents that protect the infant against disease, especially diarrhoea. These are not present in animal milk or formula. Breastmilk also aids the development of the infant’s own immune system.

Prevents Diarrhoea / Diarrhea. Diarrhoea is the leading cause of death among infants in developing countries. Infants under two months of age who are not breastfed are 25 times as likely to die of diarrhea than infants exclusively breastfed. Continued breastfeeding during diarrhea reduces dehydration, severity, duration, and negative nutritional consequences of diarrhea.

Provides Complete and Perfect Nutrition. Breastmilk is a perfect food that cannot be duplicated. It is more easily digested than any substitute, and it actually alters in composition to meet the changing nutritional needs of the growing infant. It provides all the nutrients and water needed by a healthy infant during the first 6 months of life. Formula or cow’s milk may be too dilute (which reduces its nutritional value) or too concentrated (so that it does not provide enough water), and the proportions of different nutrients are not ideal.

Maximizes a Child’s Physical and Intellectual Potential. Malnutrition among infants up to six months of age can be virtually eradicated by the practice of exclusive breastfeeding. For young children beyond six months, breastmilk serves as the nutritional foundation to promote continued healthful growth. Premature infants fed breastmilk show higher developmental scores as toddlers and higher IQs as children than those not fed breastmilk.

Promotes the Recovery of the Sick Child. Breastfeeding provides a nutritious, easily digestible food when a sick child loses appetite for other foods. When a child is ill or has diarrhea, breastfeeding helps prevent dehydration. Frequent breastfeeding also diminishes the risk of malnutrition and fosters catch-up growth following illness.

Supports Food Security. Breastmilk provides total food security for an infant’s first six months. It maximizes food resources, both because it is naturally renewing, and because food that would otherwise be fed to an infant can be given to others. A mother’s milk supply adjusts to demand; only extremely malnourished mothers have a reduced capacity to breastfeed.

Bonds Mother and Child. Breastfeeding immediately after delivery encourages the “bonding” of the mother to her infant, which has important emotional benefits for both and helps to secure the child’s place within the family. Breastfeeding provides physiological and psychological benefits for both mother and child. It creates emotional bonds, and has been known to reduce rates of infant abandonment.

Helps Birth Spacing. In developing countries, exclusive breastfeeding reduces total potential fertility as much as all other modern contraceptive methods combined. Mothers who breastfeed usually have a longer period of infertility after giving birth than do mothers who do not breastfeed.

Benefits Maternal Health. Breastfeeding reduces the mother’s risk of fatal postpartum hemorrhage, the risk of breast and ovarian cancer, and of anemia. By spacing births, breastfeeding allows the mother to recuperate before she conceives again.

Saves Money. Breastfeeding is among the most cost-effective of child survival interventions. Households save money; and institutions economize by reducing the need for bottles and formulas. By shortening mothers’ hospital stay, nations save foreign exchange. There are none of the expenses associated with feeding breastmilk substitutes (e.g. the costs of fuel, utensils, and special formulas, and of the mother’s time in formula preparation).

Is Environment-friendly. Breastfeeding does not waste scarce resources or create pollution. Breastmilk is a naturally-renewable resource that requires no packaging, shipping, or disposal.

Breastfeeding is Clean. It does not require the use of bottles, nipples, water and formula which are easily contaminated with bacteria that can cause diarrhoea.

Milk intolerance is very rare in infants who take only breastmilk.

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1. Find a peaceful atmosphere for nursing. Before beginning the feeding, unplug the phone, turn on relaxing music and do deep breathing. (Take four or five deep abdominal breaths.)
2. If breastfeeding in public makes you uncomfortable, insist on your privacy and/or drape a light cover over your baby and your shoulder.
3. Interact with friends and breastfeeding professionals who are supportive of breastfeeding. Do not let well-meaning friends and relatives who have different attitudes discourage you.
4. Restrict visitors until you are comfortable.
5. Be around other nursing mothers. Attend a postpartum exercise class and/or support group.
6. Be sure your baby is positioned properly and allow enough suckling time.

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• How can your family help while you breastfeed?
• Build Your Breastfeeding Support Network
• Breastfeeding – La Leche League International

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Some babies will let you know that they are becoming disinterested in the by playing with it, looking around the room and simply not latching on or paying much attention to what you are offering.  They will display an interest when they see other babies or children using a bottle, sippy cup or eating food.

And few will reach a point where the milk does not sustain them anymore, whether the reason being that you are not supplying enough milk or their bodies just need more substance, they will let you know that they need more.

In any of the cases, all indications are that it’s time to begin weaning.  Each baby is unique, so each experience is different, though some suggestions for weaning your baby to a bottle or sippy cup are to begin reducing the number of feedings from the breast.  Decrease the feedings by one per day and replace that feeding with the new method until the weaning process is complete.  Some mothers find that mixing their breast milk with the formula or milk helps the baby make this transition because it is a taste that they recognize. Once they realize the flow of the bottle they tend to prefer as well, making the process that much easier.

Avoid confusion with your baby by sitting in a different place and holding her in a different position than you normally did when you breastfed, each time you introduce the new bottle.  This will help her to separate the breastfeeding versus the bottle feedings.  

The next step is to wean yourself.  For lack of better words, your body has become a milk factory,  a diner of sorts, since you started breastfeeding.  It’s time to stop producing milk.  While you are weaning your baby your breasts will feel heavy, swollen and engorged.  It’s likely that you will have to express milk to relieve some of this – doing so in the shower is the most comfortable place.  Allow the warm water to run down onto you and message your breasts, working out any knots that you might feel.  Be careful not to completely empty your breasts, as that is a signal to ‘refill’.  You only want to express enough milk to make yourself comfortable.  The excess milk will be absorbed back into your body.

Related Reading

• Weaning your baby
• 10 Reasons to Think Twice about Weaning
• Breastfeeding Weaning Best Practices
• Five Signs the Time to Wean has come
• Starting Solid Foods
• A Brief History of Weaning
• Is it OK to let my baby breastfeed for comfort?
• How long should I breastfeed?

What are some of the advantages to breastfeeding:

Infection-fighting. A mother who breastfeeds her baby passes antibodies to her child which can help lower the occurrence of many conditions, including:

• ear infections
• diarrhea
• respiratory infections
• meningitis

Other factors in breastmilk help to protect a breastfed baby from infection by contributing to the infant’s immune system by increasing the barriers to infection and decreasing the growth of organisms like bacteria and viruses.

Breastfeeding has more advantages for premature babies and also may protect children against:

• allergies
• asthma
• diabetes
• obesity
• sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)

As a group, breastfed babies have fewer infections and hospitalizations than formula-fed infants.

Nutrition and ease of digestion. Breast milk is frequently called the “perfect food” for a human baby’s digestive system, breast milk’s components — lactose, protein (whey and casein), and fat — are easily absorbed by a newborn’s immature digestive system. As a group, breastfed infants have less difficulty with digestion than do formula-fed infants as breast milk tends to be more easily digested so that breastfed babies have fewer incidences of diarrhea or constipation.

Breast milk also naturally contains many of the vitamins and minerals that a newborn requires. A healthy mother usually does not need any additional vitamins or nutritional supplements.

Free. One of the easiest to measure advantages of breastfeeding is that it is free. Breast milk doesn’t cost a cent. With the fortifications to the child’s immune system it can mean fewer trips to the doctor’s office or loss of time from work to care for a sick infant.

Convenience. It can be With no last-minute runs to the store for more formula, breast milk is always fresh and available. And when women breastfeed, there’s no need to warm up bottles in the middle of the night. It’s also easy for breastfeeding mothers to be active — and go out and about — with their babies and know that they’ll have food available for whenever their little one is hungry.

Obesity prevention. Some studies have found that breastfeeding may help prevent obesity.

Smarter babies. Some studies suggest that children who were exclusively breastfed have slightly higher IQs than children who were formula fed.

“Skin-to-skin” contact. Many nursing mothers really enjoy the experience of bonding so closely with their babies. And the skin-to-skin contact can enhance the emotional connection between mother and infant.

Beneficial for mom, too. The ability to nourish a baby totally can also help a new mother feel confident in her ability to care for her baby. Breastfeeding also burns calories and helps shrink the uterus, so nursing moms may be able to return to their pre-pregnancy shape and weight quicker. In addition, studies show that breastfeeding helps lower the risk of breast cancer and also may help decrease the risk of uterine and ovarian cancer.

Related Reading

• What are the advantages of breastfeeding?
• Breastfeeding Benifits
• Breastfeeding Benefits to the Mother
• Breastfeeding Acronym