Help get my hysterical 15month off my boob!

[RubyrooUK]

warning - a bit long

Hello

I have LOVED breastfeeding my 15mo DS. After a tricky start, it has been incredible for both of us but now I really want to wean him. Why?

I've been back at work full-time for six months. I'm totally exhausted. (Um, I might have posted about his sleeping before....) He won't let anyone else put him to bed and I need to be away occasionally in the evening. I feel stressed every time I have to go out as he is so inconsolable without BF. I really, really want to conceive Baby No 2 and due to my fertility problems, it ain't gonna happen without masses of help.

What's the problem? Well, this kid loves breastfeeding. He has never managed to drop off to sleep without it. He still wakes up every three hours in the night crying for breastfeeding. He WILL NOT allow his father to put him to bed or settle him again.

Tonight, he went to bed at 7:30pm (breastfeed - took 30min to fall asleep). Woke up at 8pm. His dad went to settle him. Hysterical screaming. 8:15, he is sick down himself with distress. Change of clothes. 8:45, choking over and over and wheezing with being hysterical. 9:00 - still screaming. All this time, his dad (who he loves in the day) is cuddling and cuddling, singing gently and he is just going crazy shouting "no no no" and weeping. 9:30, starts retching again because he is so hysterical. Nowhere near sleep. We give up and I resettle him in 10 minutes with a breastfeed.

We have tried the Baby Whisperer to get him to sleep better and I've read the No-Cry Sleep Solution (he is too young to understand her book about giving up breastfeeding and he doesn't respond to this idea of gradually kicking him off the boob earlier and earlier).

I don't want to do Controlled Crying, not when he vomits down himself getting upset. And I find it incredibly hard to listen to him scream for SO LONG. We have just tried two weeks of my husband trying to settle him when he wakes at night rather than breastfeed now and he will cry for up to 4 hours rather go to sleep. My husband ends up crying with exhaustion!

I have asked La Leche League about this and the response was just that he seemed very attached to breastfeeding so perhaps it was too early to wean him and I should just stick to it. Or feed him more in the day so he doesn't want it at night (not possible if you have to work full time!!!!)

I would be happy to keep feeding if he could settle another way from time to time but I have to work occasionally in the evening and that means he will just scream for up to 3 hours for my DH. I just want him to be able to settle for someone but me. He isn't a newborn baby; he is 15 months and his dad is amazing.

He will not take a bottle. He will drink milk from a cup during the day but will not touch a cup at night. If I go out, he just refuses everything after dinner rather than take a bottle or cup. He won't touch a dummy. He has no comfort object (I've tried).

Any advice? Please don't tell me what a crap job I'm doing. He is an amazing, happy, funny little boy who is so, so loving and affectionate and I have loved our breastfeeding time, but at the moment I feel like I want him to have more options to help him sleep without getting sick with distress. Help!

Oh, I should add that he is in his own bed as he hated his cot, didn't want to sleep there and learned to climb out as soon as he could stand. He usually ends up in our bed for most of the night.

Oh gosh,how horrible for all of you that sounds. I have a similar temperment small girl and she is still bf at um..4. sorry! but I haven't tried yet to wean her other than cutting down,she only has a feed when she wakes and one at bedtime. I am trying to broach the idea with her but she has just started school and isn't very happy so I am leaving it for a few months.
so although I am probably no help whatsoever,I would imagine that the key would be getting him to take a bottle at night rather than a breastfeed-does he ever drink from a bottle? has he ever had any formula? the only other thing I can say is that my older Dd was feeding five/six times a night at his age, I got pregnant again when she was 18m and she chose to stop feeding when i was about 8m pregnant. So he may surprise you and make his own mind up. things change quickly when they are so small. A few months might make all the difference.

No advice I'm afraid but, aside from the fact I'm not in paid employment and don't want to get pregnant :), could almost be talking about my ds.
Will be watching this with interest

Thanks for responses so far. Yes we have tried bottles. Took expressed milk till 4mo then decided that neither expressed or formula in a bottle would be acceptable.

He has never drunk a bottle at nursery either (they tried twice a day for three months) and wouldn't touch formula. Or cow's milk. Every other child has a bottle/cup of milk there now. He eats Greek yoghurt.

In the last month, he has started drinking a little milk in a cup at the weekend (he only likes the expensive toddler milk he tried at a friend's house but we are mixing with cow's milk). But he won't have that as BF substitute. You can't even get the cup near him as he flails!!!

He is even more stubborn than me and my DH, which is terrible.....

I hear you. For ds, breast is the best bloody thing in the world.

I don't think you are doing a crap job. Sounds like you have tried a lot of sensible stuff. And actually you've done such a good job he thinks you are the answer to all his problems.

Is he teething? Ds is getting his molars and he just woke up FOUR times when I tried to get myself away from him.

I'm sorry I don't have a perfection solution for you. Just one small idea, if you have to work evening just get dh to let him stay up. I know its not great as he will get grumpy but must be better than the hysterical crying and vomiting.

On your day off try offering and offering and offering, see if it makes any difference to the nighttime.

hellymelly - four? Gulp!

(Not that I would have a problem breastfeeding a four year old, I just suspect my DS would love to breastfeed till the age of four and we would remain a single child family forever!)

Hi there you sound like me. I bf my first dc till he was 23 months. We stopped because we had to as it was too bloody painful. Turns out I was pregnant. he was completely bf. Like yours wouldn't take bottle, no formula, tried cows milk in cup but didn't drink much. He too was bf to sleep. What we did was when he woke up in the night, dh would take him screaming (and we lived in a terraced house) bounce on the gym ball and/or feed him packets after packets of ella's kitchen fruit smoothies. He'd end up falling asleep again. He finally went through the night at 23 months. Coincidence (stopping bf!)?

Roll on dc2. She's 14 month now and had only slept for a max of 4 hours at any stretch. I went back to work when she was 6 months and yes she too will only have the boob. Screaming etc. She did drink a whole pack of aptamil (after many months of not wanting a bottle or cup). She drank it out of one of those toddler cups (but you still need to suck at it). I'd never ever seen her drink so much. Now we are trying to get her to sleep on her own futon (on floor). Dh sleeps 'with her' when she wakes up. Last night she cried loads and ended up with 2 smoothies and a plate of cheese . But she only woke 2x as opposed to her usual 4. And I finally had a night's sleep.

Good luck. I find persevering works especially if they are 'old enough' to not really need the boob whole night long.

Thanks drcrab - we haven't tried pouring food down his throat in the night yet but we would even probably order him a Mcdonald's if that would work (joke, joke obviously).....

I didn't imagine I would be still bf feeding at four.I imagined two,possibly three at the outside. Next week I will have done seven solid years with only a three week break at the end of my pregnancy with dd2. I don't know what your fertility probs were,but I got pregnant with DD2 the first time I tried( at 42) while still bf six times a night and a lot in the day.Dropping one feed brought my periods back at 12m. So keeping up feeding may not make any difference as long as you are having periods.

Thanks helly.

I just don't ovulate on my own - no medical reason found why after four years of testing - so I think pregnancy is unlikely without help.

I wouldn't mind keeping on feeding DS till he was four if he needed it if he could just be less hysterical when his dad settles him. He is such a good dad, shares all care and adores his son and yet DS just wants me at night.

Still looking for help/advice here but trying to remember DS is only 15mo and one day he will tell me he hates me/slams door/never want to hug me so I should appreciate this time.

You're doing a fab job.

The bad news: even if you weaned, it might not make any difference. I know quite a lot of people in a similar situation who fully weaned and found that they were still the only person who could put their DC (back) to bed. (I also know people whose DC would be put to bed by DH while they were still bf, but once they were weaned, they would only let their mum put them (back) to bed.)

When you try to do it, it will be harder if it's during a sleep regression period ie when he's working on a developmental leap. There are leaps at around 15 and 17 months (in the run up to the 64 and 75 week developmental leaps IIRC), and again at 18 months and around 21 months. You can read about them The Wonder Weeks (mental development leaps 9 and 10). There's more on sleep regressions generally here.

Another issue is that for some children, weaning (or night weaning) doesn't make any difference to the number of night wakings. We tried it twice - it worked the first time, but the second time DS woke just as often, but was a lot harder to get to sleep.

I wouldn't even bother getting your DH to try to resettle him when he wakes - if you want to work on something, I'd work on getting DH to get him to sleep in the first place. Waking in the night to find someone unexpected there would be enough to faze anyone. If you can crack bedtime, there's much more likelihood of your DH being able to get him back off again once he wakes. My 23 m.o. DS is happy for DH to rock him to sleep, but wouldn't let DH resettle him in the night if he really wanted me. If DH gets him to sleep in the first place, he can resettle him without problems.

You may find that things change after 18-21 months when they really stop being toddler-sized babies and start becoming 'proper' toddlers. (Although maybe not.)

Sorry that's not more optimistic, but I hope it helps a bit. I sympathise - I'm lucky that I don't go out to work, but DS is not a good sleeper. I have dealt with every single night waking since he was born (apart from when I go out in the evenings), and he's averaged 3 or 4 wakings a night, I reckon. We co-sleep which works really well for me though and is the main way I cope. DS is very attached to bf in the day, and feeds about 8 times in the daytime at the moment. More recently he has been able to cope with me delaying some daytime feeds, which I thought would never happen.

Thanks AngelDog.

I'm sure you are right and when he gets a few months older, things may be so different.

I don't expect him to sleep once weaned as I'm not expecting miracles (I didn't sleep through till age 4 ) but I'd just love his dad to be able to settle him.

I am aware that he wouldn't necessarily sleep - he has woken every few hours since he was 6 mo old - before that it was every 45 min. The whole sleep thing is yet another issue......but one I am currently just trying to ignore.....

I so feel your pain. DD was a bit better at being settled by DH on occasion, but at 15mo she stopped feeding to sleep. That last feed was getting more and more like the feeding olympics (hand in my mouth, both feet in my mouth, standing on my lap, walking off - all with my boob firmly in her mouth, ouch)

We turned a corner at about 16mo when I had to miss bedtime because of a work thing. We were amazed that she settled without me - but we think it worked because she hadn't seen me since that morning. It took DH about an hour to settle her, but because she 'knew' I wasn't there, she didn't bother waking up that night, or any night afterwards for that matter. I don't know if that's something you could attempt one night, just to see? But you'll have to find something worthwhile to do after work.

DD has just hit 18mo, and she's been absolutely obsessed with bf this weekend, after being on just two feeds a day since her birthday. AngelDog, thanks for the inadvertant reassurance that this is normal. She is getting her canines at the moment which I'm sure is at the bottom of it all.

She is another one who was born to bf - she absolutely loves it. I have got to get my head around the possibility that I'll be feeding a 4yo. Not something I wanted to do, but I seriously think she'll endure pg hormones in my milk (when/if we get there) in order to get her precious milk!

Good luck OP. Hope you find something that works.

That does sound shattering, OP. :( I guess my main point is to be realistic in your expectations, and if trying to change things doesn't work right now, don't be despondent - it may well work at a different point. But it sounds like you know that. :)

Stetson, the 18 m.o. sleep regression is hideous. Developmental leaps can also have a big effect on daytime behaviour, mood, feeding / eating etc. Some children go on bf binges when they're working on a developmental spurt. And yes, teeth do make it go mad - DS was like that with his first molars and canines - but not any of his other teeth.

You can read about the 18 month thing here and here (one developmental psychologist describes 18-21 months as 'the mother of all developmental transitions'. But you never know - DS's sleep always went mental during developmental leaps, but the 18 month regression passed us by).

Rubyrool I meant to ask - what's he like at nap times? I always found that if ever I was trying something new at bedtime (like removing the feed to sleep), if I introduced it at naptime first, it would have a fighting chance of working.

Angel, those links are fab - you are queen of sleep links, it was you that pointed me to the Wonder Weeks months ago. It explains the sudden tantrums, reluctance to let us leave the room at bedtime and switching back to feeding to sleep which we'd ditched a couple of months ago. Such a contrast to last week when she was napping really well, in her cot not the pushchair for the first time ever. We'll just go with it and get back to normal when we're out the other side.

If only I hadn't learnt about it all the hard way...

Thanks everyone. Although the thought of an 18 month regression makes me sweat a bit. I can only presume that DS will need to interrupt the space-time continuum to start breastfeeding all over again through the night by morning.

I am lying here resettling him for the fourth time tonight so far. His dad did just try but DS kept latching onto his nose with great force then spitting it out in fury. So, er, that's more breastfeeding you want then?

Stetson - naps...well, in 15mo, he has never managed to have a nap at home without breastfeeding. He can sleep in the car or pram but even when exhausted, it takes him about 45mins to switch off in the car or pram. I walk a lot.

However, at nursery where he is 5 days a week, he does nap in a bouncer. He never sleeps that much though - an hour a day normally? Sometimes 1.5hrs if he is shattered? The rest of the time he is on the go.

When he started nursery and they got him to sleep in a bouncer (the git), we bought an identical one and spent three months trying to replicate the experience in every way at the weekends (short of getting a load of other kids round in bouncers). No cigar.

Sounds exactly like DD then

I have walked more since I had DD than the rest of my life combined. There have only been a couple of occasions that anything has worked. The first time was temporary, after a sleep regression we never got it back again. The second time, which was only a few short weeks ago, I got her napping in the cot when we changed her bedtime routine. However, that looks like being temporary again as we've hit this 18month regression and she won't nap in the cot any more, unless I feed her to sleep. However, she sleeps for up to two hours in the cot at nursery and has done from day 1. The bugger.

It's so hard isn't it? You know that for your own sanity you need to bf less, or get him less reliant on the bf, but when you've got a child that enjoys it and gets so much comfort from it, how on earth do you take that away? It's times like this that I find the MN chestnut "This Too Shall Pass" helps a little bit. I've sort of resigned myself to just going with it and at some point she will give me up. In the meantime I might plot some future revenge tactics for when she's a teenager, and presumably won't need bf anymore well, hopefully

So while I can't offer any meaningful help, will do? Or just a strong if he's going to need another feed soon?

I should add my two are 4 and 6 (nearly 7) and they still won't have anyone but me put them to bed or when they wake at night.I think dd1 now would probably cuddle down with DH,but the total hysteria of DD2 puts her off!.DD2 was completely hysterical the one time i left DH to put her to sleep (she was still awake,and I had to go out)She had only just dropped off an hour and a half later just as I arrived home. I agree with angel on everything,even when Dd1 was no longer bf,she still just wanted me at every waking and every bedtime,and my DH is a really hands on Daddy who works from home and spends a lot of time with the dds. I realise you may be going "AAAAARGGGH" at the thought of this going on for years,but I thought you might find it reassuring that you sound like a lovely parent,it is just sometimes the way a child feels.

That sounds very familiar, the recreating everything from nursery but with no joy. (Not happened to me, but I've heard it lots of times.)

Apparently this pram rocker is good for children who like to be on the move.

It does sound like he's one of those high-energy children, OP. Have another from me too.

Dd 2 is lot like this and feel similar. at a similar stage re work but am only PT thank god.

Have, however, managed to get her off boob between 11pm and 5.30am using a method someone recommended on here, dr jay gordon I think, co-sleeping but withdrawing boob. Basically, we were away on holiday and just banned boob/milk between those hours. Cuddled her, sang to her, walked with her, rocked her, everything but bf! First five nights were hell, dh did the worst of it and i took over at 4 or 5am and cos were on holiday he's sleep til 10am.then it settled down.

8 weeks or so on dd2 still wakes a lot at night, every few hours, and worse at the moment as ill/teething, but have stuck to it, she has sippycup of water instead of boob, she doesn't like it but only low-level grizzling now instead of all-out screaming.

The main benefit has been that Dh can do the odd night and am not so dehydrated in the morning. Would really like to chuck in bf completely now, i don't enjoy it and feel exhausted and tearful all the time, but dd loves it and am also guilt-ridden about working and her getting sick, feel like i should carry on bfeeding. As if i stop and she gets some terrible bug it'll be all my fault!

Argh.

Oh my goodness it is not just me then? DD is 15 months, we cosleep, she feeds all night and will never be settled by DH. It better improve before she is 4 or there will be no siblings!

I feel your pain OP - have a very un-mumsnet hug from me, and know you are not alone.

I say this too shall pass a lot. Feels like I am wishing her life away

Just a ton of sympathy from me. I was there with DS and he slowly gave up feeding in the daytime, of his own accord, until all that remained was the night feeds. He started out in his cot but came into bed with us at some point every night. I started wearing tight tops to bed and one day he stopped helping himself. He was 2.3 and I didn't notice at first

I am there all over again with DD, 14m. She will settle beautifully for DH most of the time but 9 out of 10 nights will scream for a feed at some point between bedtime and morning, probably due to wind/teething/bit of reflux whatever. I am in my 5th year of no sleep and it is wearing damned thin, but I will go with it as much as possible. It will pass eventually. It will. It will. It will.

Zzzzzz am rocking there with you ohbugrit!

OP, think that a balance has to be struck, if you're keen to try for another baby and it'll be challenging /may take time, then your own wellbeing is important too. I weaned dd1 off boob earlier due to fertility probs, as felt I had to get more rest/stop the bf hormones etc. But she wasn't quite as much of a boob fiend!

Funnily enough, now dd2 will settle for dh (never would before) and our childminder with just cuddles, but if I am there all she wants is the boob, sigh.