to ask if night weaning really works?

[lola88]

DS is 11 months and still taking up to 14oz of formula at night, he can wake anything between 2 and 7 times a night and i feed him back to sleep. This has got to stop i totally admit i've allowed him to do it because i've been to tired to fight him and give up after a while and give him the bottle but enough is enough. He deff does not need fed at night i'm 100% sure it's habbit not hunger and he eats plenty in the day so i'm sure he's ready to stop eating at night.

DP is off the next 4 days so i am ditching the milk and will only offer water i've heard people say this can work in 3 nights but i am just finding it hard to imagin how DS can go from waking constantly to sleeping all night.

So does only offering water really work? has anyone done it and how quickly did it work?

[lola88]

meant to post this in AIBU clearly i need more sleep

[EauRouge]

Do you mean 'works' as in they sleep through the night? I don't know about bottle feeding, mine are BF but the biggest still wakes in the night even though she is night-weaned. I just cuddle her back to sleep instead of BF. She's 4yo though so a bit older. Does your DS have a dummy?

[lola88]

He did have a dummy but refused it about 8 weeks ago and will not take it now, i'd settle for sleeps more than 4 hours in a row tbh.

[emsyj]

I night weaned DD from constant night time breastfeeding at 11/12 months (think it was a few weeks before her first birthday). It did work, she had been used to snacking all night and once I stopped offering milk at night she reduced her waking substantially - it didn't eliminate it, but it was a lot better. Shortly after that she did sleep through although not reliably every single night (to be fair she still wakes maybe once or twice a week now at 2y8mo, but usually only for a drink/a cuddle or whatever).

It was hard work cuddling/soothing her to sleep without milk, but I think it took me 2-3 nights. I can't remember exactly but it was definitely less than a week, it was quick.

[PoppyWearer]

From experience, most habits of this kind take 2-3 nights/days to break.

When we night-weaned DC1 it was 2 nights. Lots of screaming the first night, a bit the second night, no screaming the third.

We got two nights into night-weaning DC2 (16mo) and gave up because he was unwell. Now waiting for him to be well enough to try again!

[rhetorician]

it worked for us; similar to others on here, DD2 was snacking all night, waking frequently (every 2-3 hours ) and just after her first birthday we moved her out of our room and stopped feeding her at night. First night she woke at 3, cried for 30 mins (I went in, gave her water, made her furious), second night she woke at 6, cried for 15 minutes, went back to sleep. Since then she sleeps 7.30-7.30+ wakes occasionally but settles herself (we don't go in because she is in with big sister). Just dropping her bedtime feed now (she's nearly 14 months).

[lola88]

that make me feel so much better he woke 5 times last night just to snack it needs to stop

[emsyj]

Summoning up the energy to stop doing it is the hardest bit - it might be a rough first night, what we did was DH slept in the spare room and I did all the night, then he took over in the morning and I went back to bed. Then we were both suitably strengthened sleep-wise to cope with the second night, which was nowhere near as bad. We did it over a long weekend (possibly it was the early May bank holiday as DD's birthday is late May....)

[rhetorician]

yes, summoning energy was the worst bit by far. Should add, she was co-sleeping with us as well, at least from about 11pm onwards, so everyone was waking up everyone else. Awful. She was also ready - I don't think it would have worked 3 months earlier. But no healthy one year old needs to feed 5x at night. DD2 was in much better humour too, once she was getting proper deep sleep. Not to mention her parents...

[VariousBartimaeus]

I did it at 13 months and it worked from night 1

First, from 11 months I stopped letting DS BF to sleep. We introduced a book in between the evening BF and being put in his cot awake to go to sleep. This took a few days of crying but it worked well, though I still fed him in the night.

After a few weeks he naturally stopped waking up as frequently (or learnt to self-settle a bit). Once he was down to one or two wakings a night I decided to night wean. Two weeks before, we upped his daytime milk intake (adding an extra bottle and increasing the amount of his afternoon bottle).

I chose to night wean starting on the Friday night (planning on 3 bad nights) so I could get sleep during the weekend (I work FT Mon-Fri).

To my utter he didn't pull at my clothes to feed in the night, or cry very much. Instead of craddling him in the feeding position I would cuddle him upright and walk around the room shushing him. When he was calm I put him back in his cot and he went back to sleep.

I always offer water though - he takes it 50% of the time, sometimes just having a sip of water send him right back off to sleep.

It has had a very good impact on his sleep as he can now self-settle. I still have to get up once a night on average (but it's usually very quick, don't even have to take him out of the cot) and more if he's teething or is ill (he's currently got tonsilitis and the lack of sleep is killing me! )

[lola88]

Thanks we are all ready to go tonight with the water, I'm not banking on him sleeping through but hopefully he won't be waking 5 and 6 times a night soon

[lola88]

oh no only been sleeping an hour and already up! if he had a bottle would be back asleepin mins but is crying his eyes out :( this is going to be hard :(

[rhetorician]

lola does he normally wake so soon after going to bed? if so, you might need to look at his naps etc as that's a classic sign of over tiredness. I should probably have said in my original post that DP gave DD2 a dream-feed about 30 mins before she normally would have woken - we did this for about a week and then dropped it. That way we were sure that she wasn't hungry overnight.

[lola88]

Not usually he usually starts at 12ish, he is terrible for getting over tired I spend all night worrying about his sleep and all day worrying about his naps, he has dropped to one nap a day now around 12 but onl for half an hour, it's not seemed to make any diff to his sleeping until tonight but he was woken up early and wanted to sleep at 6 so by 7 he was slightly over tired. I've tried all sorts with his naps and nothing makes him sleep any better, I have read every book and website I can find about sleep but nothings worked yet

[PoppyWearer]

Half an hour nap doesn't sound like enough - my 16mo naps once a day for two hours, absolutely solid sleep.

Not that it makes any difference to his night time sleep

[lola88]

I don't think half an hour is enough but he won't usually sleep any longer though he's been asleep for 40 mins just now!

I'm hoping if he sleeps better at night his naps might sort themselves out. He done a lot better than i thought last night not much crying after the first time it did take him a while to go to sleep but he got there, it also has the advanage of not having to do a nappy change which usually wakes him right up, i also suspect that all the milk he gets at night might be giving him a tummy ache by 3/4am becuase he slept 5-8.30 solid thats usualy his worst time

[lola88]

DS slept from 7.30 to 4.30 was up for 5 mins and back to sleep until 7.20 last night :) 3rd night and defo going well