Night Weaning? HELP!

[{sarah}]

I really want to start weaning Juliette of a night, but have no idea how to go about it. It's driving me crazy that she can go up to eight hours without a feed during the day (usually around 4.5hrs but up to 8hrs when I'm at work) but overnight it's only about three hours before she wants to feed. I know she doesn't need it as such because she has slept through on quite a few occassions.

The problem is that she won't accept it! She woke after 3.5 hours last night & I refused... Tried to settle her in her cot, gave her some cuddles, then tried in her cot again. All she did was cry & cry & cry for half an hour until I ended up feeding her. Then because she had worked herself up from being so upset she was awake & shouting for the next hour after.

Is this normal? Is this just what I'm going to have to deal with to wean her off night feeds? Or is there some magic trick to it? Aaron can help on Friday & Saturday nights, but otherwise he gets up to early to be dealing with screamy baby overnight.

[*becstar*]

Sarah I've just completely stopped night feeds this week myself. I was really inconsistent for ages, and depending on how tired I was I'd give in. With Jake he wasn't even getting a let down most of the time, just sucking for comfort.

I tried using a dummy to replace the sucking but he wasn't interested. In the end I just put up with a couple of nights of crying (while trying to settle him, I didn't just leave him, he's usually in our bed at this stage, lol) and at the moment I just cuddle, pat, rock and shhhh him and he gives a little cry for a couple of seconds, then stops. It's not foolproof, he's not settling properly, so I find myself doing this quite a few times until morning!!

HTH maybe a little and good luck

ETA I think what made it easier recently is that he's weaned during the day and has been for about a month now.

[Janie]

Sarah, I have no great advice, as I've never been any good at getting DS to night wean LOL. BUT, do you have either of the No Cry Sleep Solution books? I have been reading the toddler one, and it has great stuff for night weaning. Get your hands on a copy if you don't have one already, I really recommend it.

In answer to your question - YES it's normal! That doesn't mean that all babies do it, but there are a hell of a lot who do! I know it's really hard, but remember that she's still a baby, not 1 yet. And also remember that while BFing is for food, it is all wrapped up in a special cuddle and that may be what she is wanting in the night. Does she go back to sleep quickly if you feed her?

In hindsight I would say that you can try and try to make them do something, and end up with less sleep than ever, only to find that if you'd just kept on going down the 'easy' road for a little while longer things would have naturally progressed. I hope you know what I'm saying! I just mean that I wish I'd relaxed alot about that sort of thing and let it take it's course. DS was also the sort of baby who would scream and scream and get himself more and more worked up. It usually meant that I would be up even longer with him than if I'd just fed him in the first place

Something to remember - she may just be thirsty. You could try giving her a drink of water before feeding her, and see if that's all she wants. Sometimes that would work for DS, sometimes not.

Um, I think that's it. Sorry it's so garbled, have a toddler climbing over me LOL.

[{sarah}]

Water gets thrown out of the cot, the dummy gets thrown as well, so neither of those work!

Janie you make a good point.... Rather than the ten minute feed then off to sleep, there was half an hour of crying, a 15 minute feed then an hour of shouting cos she had woken properly.

[*becstar*]

yup I tried a few times, and gave up, it just seemed to happen more naturally and easily this time though, but my bub is 13 months now.

[Liz]

I weaned DS at night by offering water, he was 15 mths. It probably helped that I was 3 months pregnant and my milk was dropping anyway.

DD still feeds at night at 17 months. I've been tempted to try and wean her, but like Janie said, I tend to just go the easy route of feeding and all being asleep within 5/10mins.. as opposed to fighting and losing sleep.

[Jennifer13]

Sarah, . She's still really little and she is obviously making up for some missed day naps by bfing overnight. It sounds really draining on you. I night weaned Lucy at 16 mths by offering water, but she had been going overnight without a bf for some time before re-establishing the trend. It's very tough when you have to work the next day!

My suggestion would be to firstly offer her more bfs during the day before you start cutting back the night feeds. I know you are working and can't offer then, but make up for it a bit by fitting in an extra one in the evening or perhaps before you go to bed (like a dream feed, only I'm aware at this age you'll probably wake her!). When you do cut back the night feeds, don't do it all at once. Identify the one that you think is going to be the easiest. One thing that used to work for us too was to give her the water but bring her into bed for a cuddle with us. It's much warmer and less disruptive to have a little cuddle in bed to settle, rather than try to stand by the cot patting or rocking for an hour! We would transfer Lucy back to her own bed after she fell asleep.

At the end of the day though, a warm bf in bed is probably going to be a quicker settle than water and her cot (plus screaming). This phase will pass, if you think you can ride it out!

[marcellus]

Any luck Sarah?
The no-cry toddler book does have some really good suggestions - I'm working on that now...
I've also found that cutting the first wake-up feed is easiest. In fact he now rarely wakes up within the first 3-4 hours of going to bed (and often it's 5-6 hours).

[monnie]

It's a tough thing...I think we finally weaned night feeds at around 12 months.

I just started to reduce the amount of time feeds took...in the first week, each feed was around 7 minutes, then the next week, 6 minutes, third week, 5 minutes, etc.

Amazingly...this seemed to work!