stopping bf at night-time - pros and cons and ways of doing it please!

[happynappies]

My dd is 11 months old, and still wake up every three hours at night. I feed her and she goes straight back to sleep, but I am wrecked. I know this kind of pattern is 'normal' with bf as she is my third, and I have been bf for five years without a break. However I also realise that they don't 'need' milk at night-time. She's on the 91st centile and eating plenty in the day, as well as bf regularly. I drove away from a petrol station yesterday without paying because I'm so tired (I went back and paid when I realised!!) and am going back to work in a couple of weeks so kind of want to do something about it, but am also worried about negative effects on dd. I'm aware that she has learned to rely on feeding to get back to sleep (although I put her into her cot in the evening awake and she settles herself sucking her thumb) and that the comfort she derives from feeding is important. I don't want to do the 'wrong thing' but by the same token am getting pretty desperate. Has anyone else dealt with this issue, and in what way? Should I just leave things as they are and hope for light at the end of the tunnel down the line?

[RitaMorgan]

Firstly I did 4 hourly feeds at night - 11pm and 3am. If ds woke between those times his dad settled him back to sleep (or at least tried to!). Once he was doing 11pm-3am I started pushing the 3am feed back until it got to about 6am, then brought the 11pm earlier - basically just extending the "no feed" time in the night until he was going 7.30-6ish.

It only worked for us to have dp go to ds in the night if he wasn't having milk, because if I went to him and refused him a feed it was confusing and distressing for him. We also did it quite slowly - took about a month to go from 11pm and 3am feeds to 11pm-6am, and then didn't drop the last night feed til atleast a month after that, but no reason not to move quicker I reckon.

[happynappies]

Thanks for those ideas - seems that nice and slow is the way to go! She has actually been sleeping a bit better the last few days, so I'm going to go with it for a bit longer, then get dh to start trying to settle her I think.