I think I may have to wean at 8 months but I don’t want to
I exclusively breastfed my firstborn until 20 months without much difficulty, I had an oversupply and recurrent mastitis landing me in hospital a few times but other than this things were easy regarding latch, supply etc. My second is 8 months old now and our breastfeeding journey has been completely different, I think it may be time to wean but I don’t really want to and am seeking support. She was slow to gain weight and dropped from 99th percentile at birth to 20th percentile by 8 weeks. She had a lot of gastrointestinal symptoms and was diagnosed with a cows milk protein allergy, most of her symptoms resolved after I completely cut all cows milk protein from my diet, and she began climbing percentiles again. I haven’t had any cows milk protein/dairy in over 6 months now. She has never seemed to “like” feeding, she pulls off a lot. My first would use the breast for comfort and I could just whack him on anywhere to comfort him, my second only seems to latch when she is really hungry and even then, she pulls off a lot. She can feed better on the right side, the left has always been very difficult and currently my left has barely any supply at all (I’m lucky to pump 50mls over a whole day from my left) and I can’t get her to latch for longer than 30 seconds on the left. I take a (medically essential) medication that is known to impact supply and am wondering with this combined with her being established on solids has meant that my supply has dropped even further and it may be time to wean. Last month, she began biting me for a few days when her top teeth were popping through. She bit so hard my nipple was bleeding for a few days. For the last 2 weeks she has been even more difficult to latch so I have been pumping and my husband has been feeding through the bottle about 50% of the time, she has gained so much weight in this time that I’m wondering whether I’ve actually had a low supply for a while and that this may have contributed to her poor sleep. I know they say babies get more than the pump, but I am only pumping approx 600mls across 24 hours. I am not sure whether I have it in me to try and re-establish my supply when she seems to hate feeding from the breast anyway, and I am also able to start a new medication for my endometriosis as soon as I finish breastfeeding. If anyone read this far, thank you. If you can’t tell, I’m feeling a bit “done” and I’m not sure what to do.