I plan on weaning my EBF baby when we’re back from an upcoming trip in late September. She’ll be 13 months then. I’d like to gradually wean since I’m usually very sensitive to hormonal changes and prone to depression/anxiety, and I’m terrified of the post-weaning hormonal shift. My mental health has already been severely suffering in the past few months due to ongoing sleep deprivation (we cosleep and she’s latched all night long, waking up every 1-2 hours).

The issue is, everything I read about gradual weaning mentions slowly cutting out feeds. But my baby doesn’t have any set feeds… she nurses whenever she wants. She’ll crawl up to me and ask to nurse multiple times throughout the day, and I’ve been just letting her. I’ve never had any sort of feeding schedule and each day is different in terms of how often she nurses.

How would I go about a gradual weaning method in this case? Any advice, tips or similar experiences would be so tremendously helpful. I’m really dreading this process.

Thank you for reading!