2 year old sleep - help needed!

[Ickiness]

Posting for traffic

So, never had these problems with my daughter so I’m after some advice from you all

My DS is 2 years 4 months
He’s never really liked to sleep on his own so we have co-slept - to try and get some sleep! However, he’s waking every hour or two so this is just not working anymore
It’s also not helping as I’m still feeding him as I just can’t get him to accept any other milk, and he has a meltdown if I try and refuse to feed 🙈

So I think he’s waking as he knows I’m there and wants to feed back to sleep - he’d be happy if he just kept my boob in his mouth all night I think!

So wise mumsnetters - how do I stop the breast feeding and get him to sleep better, preferably in his own bed ??

Thanks

I was you literally 2 months ago! Not going to lie the easiest method is to go cold turkey through the night. I still let her have a feed at bedtime then in the morning but nothing overnight. Long sleeve, high neck top and prepare for a couple of long nights! By day 3 she no longer fed in the night, so got rid of the morning feed by getting up straight away with her. Then the night feed a couple of days later as she kind of forgot. She asked a couple of times but I explained she's a big girl now. She has a little bottle of very diluted sugar free squash now which we have In bed. She still Co sleeps but now sleeps through the night from about 8pm to 7am.
I have the utmost sympathy as it was killer and I could of written your post word for word! I just decided I wasn't getting any sleep anyway so may as well try to crack it.

Thank you for your reply
He properly loses his shit if I refuse him but maybe I’m just going to have to have a few bad nights with him 🙈
I just hate it when he gets so upset about it

Oh mine did too. The record was 5 hours of on off losing it. But this time being a bit older I was able to communicate better. The worst stint was an hour and a half of shouting, crying. She then accepted defeat. Each time it got less and less.

Deal with a few (a week or 2) bad nights for a whole lot better night's! I've been there though. It's really tough. I had to prewarn both neighbours it was that bad. Whatever you do, be consistent .

I can't remember what the method was called but I used one where you kind of space out time without feeding until its the whole night. I night weaned my 2.5 year old like this. So basically if he's in bed 8pm to 8am you might start by saying no feed from 8pm to 12am. Do everything you can to get him back to sleep without it for those 4 hrs. Then at 12, feed him and for the rest of the night too. Then after 3 nights of this, stretch the time é.g now you don't feed from 8pm to 1am. Its slow, but worked for us. Also, means you at least get some sleep... I did also give him Peppa Pig on an iPad in the nó feed hours if he was really distressed and nothing else would calm him.
Still haven't dropped the before bed feed yet though. It's the only time he feeds now and he proper loses his shit of I try and refuse it.

Do you have a partner who could do the first few nights? My DH has done this when I've been trying to wean both DC at night. It seems to be a little bit easier as they instinctively know that their dad can't give milk.

Thank you all 😁

Mylittlepony - that sounds like maybe a gentler way to tackle it - I may try this first and then move onto the full refusal 🙈

I’m just so ready for him to detach himself from me! I only planned to bf for 6 months - then we were on holiday so carried on as was easy, then he was teething , so carried on as didn’t want to upset him when he was already upset , etc etc and before I knew it here I am still bloody feeding ! 🙈

My son is 29 months now and I too am ready to drop that last feed. I fed my daughter to 18 months (she self weaned) so I've had nearly 4 years of it now... Im going to go with big boy bed and laying with him for a while and see can we eliminate it that way. I'm not tough enough for proper cold turkey with him.