Is my one year old trying to wean?

[marthawashington]

My daughter just turned one. She refuses to drink all day long excpept for a few sips of water every meal and won't breastfeed except once or twice a day for only a minute. But, then at night she feeds twice and possibly would want more. After the second feeding, I'm so tired I give her to my husband (we sleep in separate beds to co-sleep with her).

I'm afraid she's not getting enough liquids but don't want to introduce her to goats or cow's milk unless I know for sure she doesn't want breast milk any more or my supply will go down. If she does switch to animal milk, will she still get all the vitamins she needs that my breast milk gave her or do baby's take vitamins?

[ewe+lamb]

It sounds to me that you have a busy little girl that doesn't have time to nurse during the day and makes up for it at night - it's called reverse feeding, you can either continue with this or maybe give her a time in the day that everything quietens down and nurse her, do you feel that may be possible? Create a little nursing area with dim lighting, soft furnishings, sleepy music and get her just to rest a little and take the time to nurse and see if that makes a difference. How often does she have a wet nappy? Do you feel that she urinates sufficiently? If not uping her fluid intake is essential otherwise you'll be plagued with UTI and such like which isn't fun, I went through all that with dd and she was older but it's not an easy thing. Personally if I were you I'd try to up the nursings during the day and see what happens, hope things improve for you.

[TiredX2]

Excellent advice from ewe+lamb.

She is definately not trying to wean, she just wants to be on a different schedule than you. There are many reasons babies want to nurse more during the night--- the milk is "fattier", nothing else is going on, it might be more comfortable, etc... See if you can bring some of the benefits to nursing during the night to the day. Do you lay down with her during naps to nurse? That might also help.