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Attachment Parenting
KCKappa
member
If you've attempted nightweaning (successful or not)...
KCKappa
member
Please share your stories! What was your LO's night like before trying to nightwean? At what age(s) did you try? How did you go about it and how did your LO respond? If you were successful, did it help LO sleep any better/longer stretches?
DD is waking every hour or more lately if we try to have her sleep in her crib, every 2 hours or so if we bedshare. In either case, only nursing will get her back to sleep (serious screaming occurs if we try anything else). Sometimes it's a full feeding, other times it's just a minute or two of comfort nursing. I don't want to wean completely, but am wondering if attempting to nightwean soon might be the way to go...
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Re: If you've attempted nightweaning (successful or not)...
Most nights, I can get a stretch between 11 and 3 that I don't nurse. Sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he needs a cuddle. This was not achieved without some crying and complaining, though, and I don't think it can be unless you let the child direct it. I wasn't willing to wait that long, so there was some (attended, comforted) crying.
It took about a week of sticking to my guns to see any change and get a night where he slept more.
Now, it's still kind of a crapshoot but at least I get some good night mixed in with ones like last night. He's cutting 3 teeth so I don't want to be too much of a hard a$$.
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We waited until she was about 20 months old to start night weaning. I think she would have put up quite a fuss before then. Although there may have been a window right around 1 year when she was resisting nursing to sleep where I could have tried.
Anyway, we started about a month ago. LO was surprisingly fine with not nursing, but she took a while to actually sleep longer than 2-3 hours at a time. I nurse her and rock her, then DH takes her and reads her a few stories and she goes to sleep. DH also sleeps with her (we bedshare) because if I am there she wants me to hold her, rock her or nurse her. If DH is there she just checks to see if I am there and then rolls over and goes back to sleep. After a month she is finally only waking once in the middle of the night. We also switched from cloth to disposable diapers because i don't think she liked the feeling of cloth at night. It finally all clicked over the weekend.
Before that she was nursing every 2 hours. She was particularly needy when she was teething or sick. I'm not sure what's going to happen when she gets her two year molars. We'll see.
good luck!
We nightweaned at 15mo. DD was waking up to latch on every 2-3 hours, and I totally wasn't getting any good sleep. We followed Dr. Jay Gordon's method and blocked out the hours of 11-6am. She did ok. It took her a little longer than the 10 days to completely get over it, but she no longer asks to nurse at night. Sometime she'll wake up at 5:30am and want to nurse, and I'll just tell her "its still night night time, and we'll nursey in the morning" - it ticks her off, but she eventually goes back to sleep most nights.
I will say, nightweaning did NOT encourage DD to STTN. She'll still wake up 1-2 times, and now just asks for water vs asking to nurse. We've had the fluke nights where she did STTN but, I can count those on one hand.
I pretty much used the Jay Gordan method for both my kids. I night weaned DS1 around 20 months, and he still woke up a lot at night until he moved into his own bed around 23 months.
I night weaned DS2 over the past two weeks or so (I can't remember when I started, but it was at least ten days ago). DH and I have moved out of our bedroom temporarily to see if he sleeps better alone (long story, but we're not rearranging our apartment until we know DS2 will sleep better on his own). Night weaning has been working much better with DS2 - he started waking up only once or so between 8 pm and 5 am within about a week, and he will go back to sleep with minimal fuss about nursing. He was waking up a LOT before, too.
I think I could have night weaned DS1 earlier than I did, but he still would have woken up a lot at night. I tried night weaning DS2 for the past month or two, but he was inconsolable (and we live in an apartment building), so I waited a few weeks at a time to try again.
Here's the Jay Gordan article: https://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html
DS2 - Oct 2010 (my VBAC baby!)
We started night-weaning DS around 20 months. The first few weeks were rough because he was sick and we did some traveling to visit family, so we didn't really stick with it. Once he was healthy again we used Dr. Jay Gordon's method and it worked pretty well for us. It took about 3 weeks before we cut out the 11:30 pm waking, but a few weeks after doing that DS started sleeping much longer stretches (prior to night-weaning he was waking 2-3 times per night to nurse.)
He still wakes at night, usually about once, at which point we bring him from his room into our bed. Then he usually wakes between 5:30 and 6 am asking to nurse, and will sleep for another hour or so after nursing. Eventually we will cut that session, but at this point I'm still catching up on sleep from the last two years so I'm happy to get him to sleep for another hour!
I will say that I was very discouraged after about two weeks in because we had cut out the nursing at night and DS was waking even more than he did to nurse. He would ask to have his diaper changed, or for a drink of water, or to rock. Fortunately we were able to get through that, and now he's down to one night waking and is happy to snuggle back to sleep.
I nightweaned DD at 12 months. DD was nursing all night long and we quit cold turkey. We bedshare so the first week or so I didn't sleep in our bed--it was just LO and DH. I figured if I was trying to comfort DD she would get mad because she would want to nurse. The first night DD cried for maybe a minute. DH cuddled with her and gave her the paci and she was fine. The second night she cried for 30 seconds and the third night nothing. I was shocked at how easy it was for us.
I nightweaned when I did to get my cycle back since we wanted to TTC. My supply dropped like crazy (most likely a combination of both AF and nightweaning) and I had to stop nursing a month later.