17 month old and night/early morning feeds

[mollysmum82]

I've recently tried to wean DD at night. She was waking every half hour to hour and things were just getting ridiculous! Instead now I go straight to her when she cries and stroke her back or offer her water. This has worked to a certain extent but she still wakes at least once. When she does wake now its often for quite a long time (sometimes up to two hours) and I'm so tempted just to feed her and put her back to sleep. Have others been through this?

I wondered what to do about the early morning feeds. When she wakes at 1 or 2am I'm quite confident that its night time and I will persist with cuddling her in her cot till she falls asleep no matter how long it takes. But when she wakes at 4:30/5am things are harder as I'm often still trying to settle her at 6am and I start to feel guilty as its morning time and she might genuinely be hungry. I tried to get her up at 6am so she wasn't associating feeding with night time but she was shattered and I felt even more guilty. So I went back to feeding her when she woke early morning which meant she slept till 7:30/8am. The problem is though she doesn't know if its 6am or midnight so she's still associating night time with feeds which I think is what's causing her to wake other times in the night - I'm worried I'm confusing her and giving her mixed signals about whether she'll be fed or not.

What have other's done? Many thanks

I had this issue with my DD.
I weaned her at night at about 9 months.

Personally, (and it was a purely arbitrary rule) I refused to feed her when she woke in the middle of the night, but I fed her if she woke from 4:00am onwards.
I felt that 4:00 could count as early morning and that it was reasonable to assume that she was hungry.

I was consistent with this and I found that within a week or so she was completely at ease with it. She still woke in the night, but she no longer expected a feed, she was happy with a nappy change and a cuddle.
As long as you are consistent, you should be fine.

I had exactly that problem, and we bought the Gro clock - you set it to change from a blue star to a yellow sun at whatever time you decide is 'morning'. It took a little while but we were very firm and consistant in sayng no milk until the sun appears, and now she sleeps till 6 most mornings.
She was about 16 months when we first got the clock.

Well I had a rule that I would not feed her at all in bed after I decided to stop feeding her at night - if that makes sence! We did go through a 5 - 5.30 start for a while (which was a bit horrific).But I just got up, downstairs, lights on, strong coffee and tried to get to bed early!

This way she got completely out of the habit of "night feeds" and didn't expect them. I felt, like you, that if I sometimes fed her at night and sometimes didn't she'd be confused as she couldn't tell the time! Although interesting to see that a 4am rule worked for Molly.

BTW couldn't help noticing that you used the word "guilty" about 3 times in your OP. You sound like a good, caring mother and you are keen to do the right thing by your rather high maintanence baby, (no offence, mine was very high maintenance too! - A great life skill IMO). I do remember that time in a hazey blur as being hard work and exhausting. My DD1 is now 4yo, happy, confident, bright and secure. Sleeps all night every night and wakes up at about 7 - 7.30.

Good luck!

Ruth, not Molly!

Aw thank you ladies, you've given me lots of really good ideas and reassurance - I'll let you know how it goes!

Thank you medoitmama for your kind words too x

My DS did the two hour waking thing too, it lasted a few weeks and me and DH used to take hour long shifts sitting by his cot patting his mattress and telling him it was nite nite time.

At around 16 months he was still having two or sometimes three bottles in the night, always just feed him when he woke, we the started to water down the milk with water till finally he was only have about 2 oz of milk with 4 oz of water.

The sitting by his cot and watering down of feeds eventually led to him sleeping through at around 19months, he is a wonderful sleeper now !

Would keep it low key when she wakes and try to stick to a plan even though all you want to do is sleep

Oh and we used to call it quits at 6.30am and get him up