how do I stop night feeds?

[Ginni]

dd is 26 weeks old this week and we're just about to start solids. She's exclusively demand breastfed around every three hours day and night. The night feeds are becoming a problem for me now and I want to stop them, can anyone advise me on good ways to go about this??

[MiniMarmite]

I used the pick up put down method in The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems to drop night feeds (we dropped the middle of the night feed at 5 months and the 11 pm feed at 7 1/2 months when solids were well established). I only tried to drop the feeds at the point where DS was refusing the morning feed (so was getting enough nutrition during the day and didn't really need to be fed during the night).

Essentially, if DS cried I would pick him up and comfort him until he stopped crying. Put him down when he stopped and repeated until he settled to sleep. He does use a dummy which made it easier.

When we dropped the middle of the night feed I used the Elizabeth Pantley gradual withdrawal method for a few days first (as you can see I completely depend on books )! I would let him suckle for a bit and then settle him back to bed. Each time he cried for a feed I made the suckling time shorter until he was settling after a feed of about 30 seconds. I then did pick up put down as described above.

Good luck

[Ginni]

Thanks minimarmite. We are co-sleeping and want to continue, just to stop the night feeds - I am guessing the pick up put down method won't work so well when you pick up and put down yet are still lying next to each other? Do you have any other tips that might work for us?

[Rhian82]

DS was in a cot by our bed, but we agreed that DH would take over all night stuff for a while so DS wasn't being taunted/tempted by my breasts. Whenever he woke and cried DH was the one who comforted him. It took a while but he now sleeps much better and seems happier for being better rested. Now either of us can see to him in the night and he doesn't want feeding, but doesn't really wake often - most nights he sleeps through to 5-6am, when I give him a morning feed.

[MiniMarmite]

Hi Ginni

Co-sleeping is covered briefly in the Baby Whisperer book with a case study (but with a much older child). Essentially the mother temporarily slept elsewhere whilst the feeding habit was being broken and she moved back in again once that had been acheived (similar to what Rhian82 is describing). They had originally decided to stop co-sleeping but later realised they wanted to keep doing that but just stop the feeds.

The Elizabeth Pantley book most definetely covers co-sleeping as she co-slept with all four of her children so it might help to take a look at that. I don't know those sections in detail as we never did co-sleep. I'm quite as I was always too scared about squashing DS!