I returned to work full-time when my son was 11 months old, prior to that time, we had spent very little time apart.
In a nutshell, I continued to breastfeed him during the night, and when we were together morning and evening and during the day at weekends. He was offered cow’s milk or water to drink during the day when he was with his childminder, but didn’t drink a great deal. The first thing he would want to do when we got home at the end of the day was to sit down and feed, which was a very nice way of being close after spending the day apart.
Prior to returning to work, I would put him back in his cot after feeding him during the night, but it did sometimes take a while to sort him out and get myself to sleep. Once I went back to work I realised that I couldn’t function effectively at work on too little sleep, so I put him to sleep in his cot in the evening, but when he woke in the night he got in bed with me to feed, and stayed there till morning, which worked really well for all of us. Eventually he got to a stage where he didn’t need to feed in the night, and spent the majority of nights in his own bed.