Night weaning

raceyrae

I don't think we're there yet but I want to gather some ideas for how to do this.  Claire is getting up 2-3 times a night to nurse.  After we got the ok from the pedi on Monday that her ears weren't an issue anymore, we did sleep training with her.  She quickly figured out how to go to sleep without nursing to my relief!  I had figured that she would drop getting up at night to nurse at the same time -- only based on my experience with Natalie dropping her night nursing when we did CIO with her at 5.5 mo.  No such luck with Claire!  Although she goes to sleep without nursing (including in the middle of the night -- I change her diaper after nursing her so she's somewhat awake when I put her in the crib), she still gets up to nurse.

So if you had to night wean, how did you go about doing it?  Did you do something similar to Sleep Easy Solutions where you got up 30 min before your DC usually gets up and then decrease nursing time by about 2 min each day?  Did you just let them fuss/cry and see if they go back to sleep without nursing?  Did you use a different method?  Let's hear your success (or failure) stories.  TIA

WendyNC

I just went through this with Caylee.  She was still getting up to nurse around 11:00 to midnight and then again 4ish.  I wanted to drop the 11:00 feeding.

I relied mostly on Ferber's chapter about dropping night feedings.  He basically says they can wake up more out of habit.  I really felt like that's what she was doing, even though she nursed and ate quite a bit.  He says to just keep pushing the feeding further and further out.  So essentially I was letting her cry some and not giving in and feeding her until I thought she really needed to eat (example if she went to bed at 8 pm, I felt like she should be able to go 6 hours without nursing).  It took a few nights but she finally stopped waking up for that feeding.  I'm still nursing her now if she wakes up and it's 4 am or later, so she has slept through the night twice, but usually wakes up sometime between 4 and 6 am and I nurse her and she goes back down to sleep another couple of hours. 

Ferber says they shouldn't need to eat at night after 5 months.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt until after 6 months and the Pedi did encourage me to try to drop the night feedings at her 6 month appt.  I don't really consider a 4 am feeding to be overnight and normally it's after 5 am lately when she wakes up.  But I was pretty adamant about getting rid of that 11 pm feeding after 6 months. 

Do you have the Ferber book? 

 

NatPhoto09

I followed the sleep easy solution.  I kept 2 "night" time feeding until he was 9 months;  I would wake him up (like the sleep easy solution said) at 10:30pm and 5:30am for a feeding.  The 2am wake up that was the hardest and we finally cut it out at 7.5 months.  HTH

raceyrae

WendyNC:

I just went through this with Caylee.  She was still getting up to nurse around 11:00 to midnight and then again 4ish.  I wanted to drop the 11:00 feeding.

I relied mostly on Ferber's chapter about dropping night feedings.  He basically says they can wake up more out of habit.  I really felt like that's what she was doing, even though she nursed and ate quite a bit.  He says to just keep pushing the feeding further and further out.  So essentially I was letting her cry some and not giving in and feeding her until I thought she really needed to eat (example if she went to bed at 8 pm, I felt like she should be able to go 6 hours without nursing).  It took a few nights but she finally stopped waking up for that feeding.  I'm still nursing her now if she wakes up and it's 4 am or later, so she has slept through the night twice, but usually wakes up sometime between 4 and 6 am and I nurse her and she goes back down to sleep another couple of hours. 

Ferber says they shouldn't need to eat at night after 5 months.  I gave her the benefit of the doubt until after 6 months and the Pedi did encourage me to try to drop the night feedings at her 6 month appt.  I don't really consider a 4 am feeding to be overnight and normally it's after 5 am lately when she wakes up.  But I was pretty adamant about getting rid of that 11 pm feeding after 6 months. 

Do you have the Ferber book? 

This is what I was thinking also.  From what I've read, she shouldn't need to night time nurse after 5 mo. which she'll be on Tuesday.  I was going to give it a few more weeks and see how she does.  She also gets up at 11 and then 3 or 4.  I'd love it if she'd drop the 11 p.m. one.  I don't have the Ferber book.  I'll need to get that one.