The Weaning Diaries - Week 1

As most of you are aware, Carsten stopped taking a bottle when he was 4 months old during our moving extravaganza. We still don't know how this happened, but what it has meant for me is that he can never be too far from me since he is only breastfed. My goal has been to make it a year before attempting to wean, and we have had our difficult moments, especially when traveling, but hey, we made it! And now that he's a year old, I'd like to start weaning so we can both gain some independence. We've had a really good routine the last couple of months with good naps and good feedings, so it's hard to take the first step towards possibly messing up our comfy routine. The routine goes something like this:

-Carsten wakes up sometime around 7 am +/- 30 min
-We play and eat breakfast until ~9:00-9:30
-Naptime routine: We read books ending with 'The Going to Bed Book' by Sandra Boynton. I nurse him and since him a song in his darkened nursery, and then put him to bed (awake or asleep)
-He sleeps for about 1.25 hours
-Then we give him a snack or an early lunch depending on the time of day
-We play and then start the naptime routine (see above) again around 1 pm, although in the last week, this has moved to 2 pm.
-He generally sleeps for another 1.25 hours, and then we play, have a snack, run errands, and cook supper
-Somewhere in the supper making process, he usually wants to nurse again (~5:30 pm)
-Then we eat dinner around 6 pm
-Around 7 pm we start the bedtime routine: bath, nursing, brush teeth, 'Goodnight Moon' book, sing a song, and put in bed (awake or asleep). He usually is sleeping by 7:45 - 8:00 pm, and then usually he sleeps through the night.

My goal in the beginning stages of weaning is to wean 1 feeding per week so that when we go back to the US in a couple of weeks, we're down to 2-3 feedings per day instead of 4-5. So, today (Sept 12) we've started out by eliminating nursing before naps and moving them to after naps to remove the 5:30 pm feeding. I'm very nervous about this step because he started taking longer naps when I started nursing him directly before naps, so I'd like the long naps to stay and the nursing to go. So, here's a 'diary' so I can keep track of what's going on from week to week as I attempt to wean him.

Day 1, September 12:
-1st nap (with no nursing beforehand). We read books for 10-15 minutes until Carsten was yawning and rubbing his eyes, and we finished with his naptime book. Then we went into his darkened room and sang his naptime song, and I put him in bed and gave him his blanket as I exited the room. He was pretty quiet and was asleep within 30 minutes with no crying (sleeping at 9:50 am). He slept 1 hour on the nose and nursed happily afterwards.
-2nd nap (with no nursing beforehand). Started at 1:40 pm after read books for 10 min with yawning and rubbing of eyes. I sang to him, and he was asleep in 15 min despite the cement drill across the road.

Day 2-7, September 13: Naps were pretty much the same as Day 1, which means we successfully cut out 1 (sometimes 2 feedings if we were out of the house) feeding during the day. However, nighttime has been worse with Carsten nursing during the night about every other night, so we have cut out a day feeding and added a night time feeding. This is non-ideal. To make matters more complicated, I have a suspicion that he is teething because if we give him tylenol before bed, he sleeps much better than without tylenol, so it's unclear right now if weaning, teething, or both are causing nighttime sleep to be disrupted. I think we'll see how the next couple of days go to see if we can cut out another daytime feeding without adding additional nighttime stress.