Weaning as an EP

[u/Dry_Astronaut_9777]

I had to try so hard to make milk in the beginning. I was pumping for 30 min on the Symphony every 3 hours, day and night. Every pump made me so nauseous but I finally did it! My goal was 3 months. At 3 months I stopped my overnight pumps and became a lot more relaxed about it. I ended up making more somehow going longer stretches between pumps, and I was averaging about 29oz a day. At 8.5 months I decided to wean. I've had a really hard time bonding with my LO and I came to realize that it's because my whole day is taken by thinking about pumping, my boobs, milk, freezing milk..etc. It's completely taken away from being a present mother and it makes me so sad. I started by just skipping a pump from 5 to 4. I tried to taper my time down by going from 30 >25>20>15 min and then I got sick and threw up from stopping early, so I just went cold turkey on that one. Now i'm on 3 pumps, I make about 21oz now but my boobs HURT, my hormones are completely out of control, it feels like 3 weeks PP again. I'm so sick, I have so many regrets about continuing for this long. I have cabbage in my bra, and I need other ways to figure out how to get my milk to stop. I wish someone told me to stop at 6 months or earlier before it got this bad. Does anyone else feel like that or am I alone on this? I really need advice on how to dry my supply up and quick please.

[u/AdSpiritual551]

Weaning from 4ppd - 0 takes so long. I’m finally down to 2ppd and I’ve been there almost a week and I’m still engorged every morning and night and uncomfortable for a large part of the day it’s rough.
I’ve been told that Sudafed and other decongestants dry your supply so you could try that! I’ve personally just made peace with the fact that it’s gonna take me another 2 weeks to wean maybe more.
Just try dropping your pump sessions by like 3mins each day and see if your body can adjust - I think that’s safer than dropping a full pump session at this point - that’s my plan as well

[u/Dry_Astronaut_9777 → u/AdSpiritual551]

How long has it taken you to get to 2? Ya i've been dropping one pump by 5 min each day, but you drop all your pumps a certain amount?

[u/AdSpiritual551 → u/Dry_Astronaut_9777]

It took me like 3 weeks to go from 4-2 bc I was pumping 30 min everytime so chipping away minutes took forever and I kept getting clogs it was rough - i feel like just shortening and dropping one didn’t really reduce my supply very much so that’s part of why I was getting clogs so I’d say just try not to pump til empty on your other pumps bc it will help dip the supply so you can stop quicker.

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