Tips on night weaning? DD will only breastfeed to sleep!

[LouRose8819]

I’m hoping some of you may be able to help with tips for night weaning my 14 month old DD.

I’ve recently started the gradual process of weaning from breastfeeding, and so far I’ve been successful in dropping all feeds throughout the day. We’ve done this by distracting DD whenever she’s shown signs of wanting boob, either by playing with her toys, singing with her etc.

We’re now at the stage where we’d like to stop feeding DD to sleep. We currently co-sleep, so throughout the night she naturally latches on a lot too however this is just for comfort to help get her back to sleep when she’s unsettled. As much as I’ve loved feeding her nows the time to try and phase it out and let DH get more involved in bedtime. I’d love to be able to have an evening to myself, even just to watch some TV without having to keep getting up and down to see to DD.

Obviously we’re able to distract DD in the daytime when she wants boob but we can’t do that at night as we want her to wind down and fall to sleep. So I want to know if anyone has any tips?! We just don’t know where to start and there’s a few reasons for this:

She’s only ever been breast fed (no formula) and she’s never taken to a bottle. We keep trying to persevere with different bottles/cups to offer her milk, but she’s just not having any of it. It’s not that she doesn’t like the taste of the milk, because we’ve tried my expressed milk, along with cows milk and even follow on formula. It’s simply she hates being offered a bottle. She drinks water from her cup, but when we put milk in it she just refuses it.

We’ve considered getting her to sleep without being fed e.g stories or rocked to sleep by DH, however she associates our bedroom with boob and sleep so she screams the house down for me the minute she’s taken in there. If we try to get her to sleep in the living room she will be too switched on and want to continue playing and this isn’t ideal.

I know we’re going to have to have a few tough nights however we just really aren’t getting anywhere at the moment as she screams and shakes so much, I worry she’s going to make herself sick and it really take a while for her to calm down.

Any tips or advice would be much appreciated!!! I know DH is starting to get upset that he isn’t able to settle her to sleep and is worried that DD is always going to be more clingy towards me as she’s been breastfed X

[Harrysmummy246]

Ok so there's an idea I just saw on IG called habit stacking. DOn't take away that BF for now YET

But add some other things in. E.G. Daddy reading at the same time, stroking back at the same time, singing the same nursery rhyme etc (twinkle twinkle 1000s of times through DS first year or two)

Then gradually reduce how sleepy DD is when you stop BF, or introduce a countdown. To be honest, it stopped working to actually get DS to sleep at bedtime anyway so we'd figured out cuddling/ stroking/ singing anyway

DS was a bit older when I nightweaned (21mo) but we tried a cuddle on wake up first, briefly and if that didn't work, BF but countdown to delatching and then snuggle back in.

Didn't stop cosleeping.

He loves daddy in the day and even at bedtime. Still has to be me overnight but it's getting less frequent and easier and easier to just reassure him, say night night, sleep well, see you in the morning and blow a kiss as we leave again (a habit stack from bedtime I guess).