Need help weaning badly!?

This is hard for both mom and baby. That closeness is like nothing else. At 11 months she can be drinking from a sippy cup. If you still want this bond of nursing and you return to work, get up early enough to nurse her before leaving and then you can still nurse her before bedtime. Your milk will adust to this and will slowly cut back.

Next you can do without the nursing in the mornings and just do bedtime for that special time between you both. I would make a huge deal of her drinking from her cup.

She is not really wanting so much of the breast milk as she's wanting that closeness with you for most of the time. I know, I've been there with being used for the human pacifier. We allow it because we also love that bond.

I ended up getting mastitis 4 times before my son was 7 months old and the doctors told me I had to quit nursing because the last time it was so bad I was hospitalized. My son wanted nothing to do with a bottle. He didn't eat anything or drink for 3 full days and I was so concerned for him. He did all the things you mentioned, head butts, pulling down the shirt, screaming and crying...you think it he did it wanting to nurse.

I was miserable then my mother told me to leave him with her for about 5 hours a day and not be around him so he couldn't do this. I hated doing it, but I was at a loss of what to do. While he was with her he was fine. He drank water and formula from a sippy cup and he ate baby cereal and veggies with her. When it was his nap time and he was cranky she would give him a sippy cup with the formula followed with a couple of sips of water and then hold him, rock him, and sing to him and he'd fall asleep.

He did fine like this and then in the evenings I could not give him his sippy cup of formula, my hubby would do it for the next week and he got used to someone else being with him. It killed me not to be the one for him, but I knew this was best for him.

After the two weeks of being "gone" of not only his food but comfort I was able to start taking over some of the loving with him again before bedtime and we fell into a new routine. You'll always miss that bond and feeling, but it's all a part of your child growing and you helping him/her to do it and be independent...what we are to do as parents.

Believe me when I say this, it all goes so quickly and this is just the first "letting go" you'll have to do over their lives. It never gets easy. My little guy is now 27, soon to be 28 and is married and just had his own little one...a daughter!

Good luck!

You don't need to wean her right now. When you return to work she can (and will) eat solids and drink water from a cup with the sitter/day care provider. (No need to start with bottles at 11 months.) When you're home with her, you can nurse. (And the comfort and bonding will be especially imporant to her when you're gone all day.)

If you feel feel you really need to wean her soon, there are, unfortunately, no guaranteed ways to painlessly wean a baby/toddler who doesn't want to wean. You can continue to work with distraction and don't-ofer/don't-refuse and letting daddy spend more time with her. But at the end of the day ... if it's what you need to do, it's what you need to do. You're bigger than she is, and she can't force you to let her nurse. You'll both be very miserable for a while, but you'll both survive. (You still want to wean gradually -- you don't want mastitis.)