To think I'd get my evenings back by now?

[BananaHammock23]

Posting here for traffic hoping someone can help or at least share some hopeful stories.

My 16mo DS has never been a good sleeper. We cosleep and I still breastfeed - I feel like this is probably contributing to the problem.

My problem is that I'd really like to get my evenings back. Even if just a stretch from 7-10pm so we could spend time together without worrying or even have friends over for dinner or go out for a few hours with my mum babysitting.

We have a pretty good 7-7 routine. We do bath, book and bed and he tends to go down pretty quickly on the boob. The problem is that he then wakes up every 20 minutes-ish until I go to bed. Then he wakes up every 3 hours (on a good night). We can have anything between 2-8 wake ups a night. He has one nap a day at around 11.30/12 for 1-2 hours. This doesn't seem to make much difference to the nights.

How can I get him sleeping through, even just for that first stretch? I'd love another baby and I can't even imagine how that'll happen until DS is at least sleeping a few hours.

I have a supportive partner who does try and do their share but it does tend to fall to me in the evenings because it's quicker for me to feed him back to sleep than it is for them to rock him.

Anyway I'm tried and feel like I have no time to myself at all. I'm desperate. Any advice?

Some of the advice on here I think is quite bizarre. Of course you can have an ‘evening’ with a 16month old! The vast majority of
toddlers go to bed between 6 and 8pm and don’t get up again till morning, teething and illness etc excluded.
Ive also always breastfed mine till 2: you don’t have to stop but don’t just let them have it whenever. Maybe just bedtime, morning time and snack time x

^^ This is the answer you need OP.

I also did this (although I also weaned off the boob as by 14 months I needed my body back) and by day 3 I was able to put him in his own cot in his own room WITHOUT the boob and he would fall asleep pretty immediately.

Look up Jay Gordon's night weaning I did this with DD at about 17months and it worked brilliantly. Still had the odd wake up but no more boob in the night. It's a gentler way of doing it, just takes a few nights of being firm.

Maybe the vast majority of toddlers in our country, but certainly not the vast majority of all toddlers.
Our culture has completely skewed what we think is normal baby/toddler behaviour.
We also (most of UK mothers) have to work and often don’t have the support from extended family like in other cultures. So I can understand why people want to sleep train/night wean/have set bedtimes. But it doesn’t mean it’s bizarre to do things differently.

My youngest was like this for 2 years.

Might be coincidence but she started sleeping through a couple of weeks after we started vitamins.

It was like a miracle. She was waking 10+ times a night, then suddenly sleeping through 11-12 hours.

We moved her into a small double in her own room a few months before, and settled her in there. I ended up in there every night, freezing with my boob out.

Won’t be much help but my 2 year old self weaned throughout the night no idea how he just decided - still boobs to sleep (at the start of the night) which I’m slowly working on cutting out. But he still wakes 3-5 times a night as he wants a cuddle despite being night weaned for a few months so it doesn’t always help with the wakings.

Some things that immediately jump out to me:

*Switch to formula for the night feeds, it tends to be more bulky and promote heavier sleep
*Don't breastfeed to sleep
*Develop a strong, consistent night time routine and rigidly stick to it. Wake ups should be - short comfort, back down to sleep, rinse and repeat
*He needs more sleep in the day. At his age I'd say at least 1 hour in the morning, 1 hour early afternoon. Ideally more

Baby rice for supper? Perhaps only having milk at bedtime isn't enough if baby is going through a growth spurt.

@Tirrrrred

how come?

Agree, @Pjsandhotchoc

There’s loads of sleep association stuff in the bits of thread I’ve read (but haven’t read it all). I’m going to suggest it’s worth a look at Elizabeth Pantley/ Sarah Ockwell smith to attempt to understand what might be the things causing the wake ups. Boob might be one, but also might not. Naps might be a thing (might not). My eldest weaned at 14mths (nursing strike) but still didn’t sleep until she was in reception so you might kill off your best tool, you might also get more sleep. Dd I wrestled for naps and woke all the time. Nothing particularly worked for us barring time and she still sleeps less than average kids of her age. Youngest has slept like a log since the get go, was boobed until 2.5 and always passed out on the boob and got put into bed sleepy. The only difference might be that he had a strong attachment to a mussie which I stuck between us so the transfer was never that dramatic for him. Equally who knows? It is no accident there is a huge 7y age gap between them.

I remember this well. It does get easier Op. Neither of mine were great sleepers, but my eldest was terrible. I'm afraid to say we still don't really have our evenings though. At nearly 7 my eldest still isn't fond of sleep and doesn't go to bed until 9. Then she is often up after that to go to the bathroom and wants me to tuck her back in. My DH doesn't need much sleep and she seems to take after him.

So I realised I was going to mine whenever she made the slightest noise...potentially actually waking her up sometimes. When you say your child wakes every 20 minutes, do you mean is crying or do you mean is making a noise? Sorry if I'm stating the obvious here. I genuinely had no idea that as long as the baby wasn't distressed that it was fine not to rush in. X

I don't think you even need to night wean. Just break the sleep association at bedtime (I highly recommend the book Precious Little Sleep). It's feeding to sleep initially the creates the association and stops him from learning to fall asleep independently.

I have a 7 month old and we were similarly desperate a couple of months ago. Bedtime was a delicate process of feeding her to sleep and waiting until it was safe to sneak her into the cot without her knowing. She often woke hourly through the night and if she didn't feed back to sleep, she'd need bouncing for ages. We did some sleep training but honestly there was minimal crying. We just switched the routine around so instead of bath, feed, bed, we started to do feed, bath then bed. We lay her in the cot awake and left the room. Within one night she was falling asleep independently at night time and for naps, and the night wakings massively decreased (or when she wakes, she often cries or fusses for less than a minute and goes back to sleep herself).

She still wakes once for a feed and I still feed her to sleep in the middle of the night, because she's waking from genuine hunger so it's ok. It doesn't create any associations, it's just the bedtime feed that's crucial for that.

I've read all your comments, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and insight!

I certainly don't feel ready to give up breastfeeding - I've never been able to commit to anything before so I'm proud of how far we've come and how much we both enjoy it. That said, it does seem night weaning might be the answer. I'm going to look up some of the books PPs have suggested.

A few people have asked whether I work - yes I do! I've been working 4 days a week since DS was 3 months, but have been very fortunate that I'm self employed and have always been able to work around feeding!

We're moving house soon and I'd like to set up DS in his own room with a floor bed (I think we're past the point of no return with a cot tbh) and I think we'll go from there with night weaning. DP is going to have to take one for the team and do the nights for a bit, but I'm starting to see it's for the greater good. I suppose I can be a bit of a martyr sometimes. Anyway, thank you for being so helpful!

@Cannyapper i do try to leave him until it's absolutely clear he won't self settle. He very occasionally does rouse and go back to sleep, but 9 times out of 10 he needs support to do so.

I’m in the same position as you OP and it’s hard. It’s easy for people to say break the cycle and teach them to self sooth but if you’re exhausted and have tried things for a while and have to deal with a screaming child it’s hard not to breastfeed to settle them.

I'm in the same situation with my 16m old daughter.

She's will sleep between 7-10pm, wake for a feed and then 10:15-1/2am. I can't get her to sleep longer in her cot, at that time of night I'm a zombie and sometimes I can't even remember bringing her in to our bed. She sleep soundly in with us and hardly feeds when she is sleeping next to me.

It is tiring and I know it will be tough stopping breastfeeding to sleep, but she is my last baby so I'm tired but happy to continue at the moment.

I jinxed it with my previous post...she has just woken up 🤦‍♀️ so I'm now sat feeding 🙈👶🏼

Mine was the same (co-sleeping, breastfeeding every 45 minutes all night 7-5) until I sleep trained with the help of a sleep consultant. No breastfeeding during the night, no co-sleeping and control crying. On the first night ours cried for 2 min than 3 than 5 than 6, on the second night only 5, on the third night baby self soothed and went to sleep immediately.
It sounds like you’re baby’s sleep cycle is currently 20 min, and each time baby wakes up she/he looks for you to get help with going back to sleep, they don’t know they can self sooth themselves as they associate you and breastfeeding with sleeping. Adults have sleep cycles too, except we can put ourselves back to sleep and usually doesn’t remember being awake.
The second problem is day time nap schedule.
Some babies self sooth naturally, others if not taught directly with sleep training can take up to 3 years to learn. And they usually learn when parents are too exhausted too tend to the crying for a few minutes now and again.
Sleep training for us was the best thing we ever did, our baby was like a new baby after 12 hours of sleep, I only realized how exhausted she must of been once she was well rested. And we were better parents and better partners once we were no longer so exhausted ourselves.

Not going to be a popular opinion but the only way of improving your situation right now is acceptance. The more you fight against this, they more it will consume you and you'll tarnish the memory of your child growing. The slower you make changes, the easier it will be for both of you.
With my first, his sleep, or lack of, consumed me and every waking moment. I look back and it makes me sad that the thing that sticks out in my mind is the most about him being little is me trying everything to make him sleep longer and on his own.
For my second 2, I've accepted what is happening in the moment, worked myself around them and been so much happier. Plus they have both slept better than my first as they've been boobed to sleep and coslept. My 3 year old now needs a book and a quick cuddle to go to sleep and I can come back downstairs for an hour or two (we still cosleep). That didn't happen with my first.

I agree..
I got fed up with no evenings and my baby is only 7 months!
I started feeding him before his bath, then dad puts him to bed. We half heartedly attempted the ferber method, he cried for 3 mins the first night then fell to sleep.. now dad puts him in cot, switches light off and leaves, baby self settles with no crying.
He still wakes up 2-3 times (between 7.30pm and 8 am, i still feed him at these wakings) but I'm getting stretches of up to 5.5 hours now, and a one off of 7.5 the other night!!

I appreciate it all may change, he's still small.. but for now I enjoy going to bed again!

I’m genuinely shocked by this thread, and slightly in awe of those of you who are still dealing with so many night wakings after so many months. I feel the anti-sleep training brigade have done mums a huge disservice and made so many parents and babies horribly sleep deprived for years 😞

we sleep trained at 6 months and night weaned at 7 months so only had 2 months of hell (months 4 and 5 sleep regression hitting hard). Could not have coped with 16 months of it! Would have done both earlier if the anti-sleep training folk hadn’t scared us to death. Our lives transformed overnight (DD immediately slept through from 7-6 after night weaning and only one wake in the night after sleep training). I highly recommend both. You don’t need to stop breastfeeding during the day - I still feed DD twice a day at 11 months.

just to be clear, there is not a single study that shows sleep training in an otherwise loving, happy home causes ANY detriment whatsoever. Shocking that the “community” can cause so much fear amongst parents. Yes it’s horrible for 3-4 nights whilst your baby deals with not getting what they want anymore (the boob!), but get your husband to do it whilst you go out for a walk or pop to the shops. 3-4 nights is nothing in the grand scheme of things and the whole family, including your baby(!) benefits from getting a proper night’s sleep.

good luck OP, I’m excited for you getting your evenings and energy back!

I was in a similar situation with my twins, 16 months. Co-sleeping, feeding them back to sleep, up multiple times every hour for pretty much the whole night. Night-weaning has made a difference. I started 1 month ago at 15 months and I'm getting a lot more sleep than I was. It's still quite disrupted though - one wakes 1-2 times, the other 3-4 times, but I can cuddle, pat and shush them back to sleep pretty quickly. And I do get a slightly longer first stretch of sleep. We still co-sleep, so they get all the cuddles, but we don't feed to sleep anymore, or have any milk at night. Mine are pretty low sleep needs. They fall asleep around 8.30 and are up between 6.30 and 7. They have one nap around 12.15/12.30 lasting 1.5-2 hours.

Just wanted to comment for balance.

My son is around the same age. I breastfeed & it gets him to sleep around half of the nights - though I think he's outgrowing it helping him to sleep.

His sleep has been excellent since he was around 10 months old. These days he'll sleep through completely unless he's poorly. So don't let people tell you that your little one's sleep is bad just because you feed to sleep.