Stopping breastfeeding is likely to be an emotional event for you, your baby or both! I'll always remember the last time I nursed my youngest son while on a trip to Walt Disney World. It's a cherished memory, and knowing I'd have that memory to hold onto made it easier for me to stop. You'll likely know in your heart when the time is right.

Here's what our Mommy M.D.s — doctors who are also mothers — do to wean their own babies.

"We started transitioning to a cup around 8 to 9 months, and we finished breastfeeding just before my babies turned a year old," says Carrie Brown, M.D., a mom of two sons and a general pediatrician who treats medically complex children and specializes in palliative care at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. "The rule at our house is that when you can verbally ask for "boobies" (what my kids called the breast), you don't get any more "boobies."

"When my daughter was 21 months old, I was ready to stop nursing," says Cheri Wiggins, M.D., a mom of two daughters, a specialist in physical medicine and rehabilitation at St. Luke's Magic Valley, and the co-founder of the Mommy Doctors Bakery (makers of Milkin' Cookies) in Twin Falls, Idaho. "She wasn't. By that point, though, I needed to stop for my own sanity. Although I was fortunate that nursing came very easily physically, by that point, I was emotionally ready to be done. Weaning went much more smoothly than I had expected, though. Two months later, I got pregnant again. So, I was pretty much pregnant or nursing for five years straight! After I weaned my younger daughter when she was 22 months old, it felt really, really good to have my body back!"

"I breastfed each of my three children, and the experience was different with each of them," says Nancy Rappaport, M.D., a mom of three grown children, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, an attending child and adolescent psychiatrist in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, public schools, and the author of "The Behavior Code." "My older daughter weaned herself at six months. My son was happy with bottle and breast. My younger daughter was stubborn, and she refused to take milk except from the breast. I guess we could have starved her, but there was something very tender about her insistence."

"I nursed both of my sons," says Sharon Boyce, M.D., a mom of two sons and a family physician at DayOne Family Healthcare Clinic in Battle Creek, Michigan. "I weaned my older son when he was 14 months old because I was pregnant with my younger son. It seemed like too much to ask of my body to be pregnant and nursing at the same time! It wasn't difficult to wean my older son. He was already using a sippy cup by then, and he was nursing only a few times a day. He was ready to give it up. My younger son weaned himself when he was 10 months old. I wasn't ready, and I was really devastated by it."

"When my babies were around a year old, I stopped breastfeeding, and I gave them whole cow's milk to replace breast milk," says Susan Besser, M.D., a mom of six grown children and a grandmother of nine, and a family physician with Mercy Medical Center/Mercy Personal Physicians in Baltimore. "I think that the transition was harder on me than on my babies. While I was at work, they got pumped breast milk in a bottle anyway, so daytime feedings were an easy switch to cow's milk. I breastfed them in the morning and at night. The morning nursing wasn't too hard to stop because I was rushing around to get to work. I'd just hand the baby a sippy cup with milk. Giving up that before-bedtime feeding was harder, though. I have to admit, I hung on to that one a little longer. It was more for my babies' comfort than anything else. I gradually stopped breastfeeding them before bed, but I continued to hug them so they still fulfilled their touch quotient."

"As babies grow into toddlers, they're likely nursing less and less," says Rallie McAllister, M.D., MPH, mom of three, co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to Your Baby's First Year," nationally recognized health expert and family physician in Lexington, Kentucky. "Like many things in life, a mother's production of breast milk operates according to the law of supply and demand. In the majority of cases, the more milk our babies demand, the more milk our bodies produce for them. Anytime we nurse our babies less or they demand less milk, our production and supply of milk begin to diminish. So, naturally, you produce less milk, and because your child nurses even less, you produce even less milk. This is nature's way of helping the weaning process along!"

"To wean my sons, I simply nursed less often and for shorter and shorter periods of time," McAllister continues. "If you're nursing your baby three times a day for 20 minutes at a time, you can start by nursing just twice a day for 10 to 15 minutes at a time for a couple of days. Then you can keep reducing the duration and frequency of nursing even more until your baby is completely weaned from the breast. By doing this, you'll produce less and less milk, and that will make weaning more comfortable for you. It will also make weaning more pleasant for your baby, because she'll be progressively adjusting to nursing less and drinking more from her sippy cup."

When to Call the Doctor

You may have experienced a breast infection, or mastitis, at some point while you were nursing. But even if you managed to sail through nursing without major incident, if you now try to wean your child abruptly, the sudden stop could lead to a bout with mastitis. Call your doctor if you have signs of an infection, such as pain, tenderness, a feeling of warmth on the breasts, swelling, a lump, fever, aches and pains, flulike symptoms, nipple discharge or a change in nipple sensation, or swollen or tender lymph nodes in your armpit.

Jennifer Bright is a mom of four sons, co-founder and CEO of family- and veteran- owned custom publisher Momosa Publishing, co-founder of the Mommy MD Guides team of 150+ mommy M.D.s, and co-author of "The Mommy MD Guide to the Toddler Years." She lives in Hellertown, Pennsylvania. To find out more about Jennifer Bright and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: RitaE at Pixabay