To night wean or not night wean? (2 y.o.)

[AngelsfromtherealmsofgloryDog]

DS turned 2 this week and I'm finding nights increasingly hard to deal with.

He's currently waking 3-5 a night (all after I go to bed). He wants bf, but then doesn't go back to sleep and needs rocking. We co-sleep so I lie on my back with my knees bent, he lies sideways across my chest and I bounce him back to sleep. On a good day I can then roll him off once he's asleep. On a bad day I fall asleep first and wake up with a 2.5 stone toddler still lying across me.

My back hurts.

I don't actually mind night feeds; it's the rocking which is killing me. I have to wake up too much so I'm tired and grumpy with him in the daytime.

At bedtime he either feeds to sleep, or feeds to sleep while I also rock him, or needs rocking after he's fed.

He sleeps well at naptime and doesn't wake between sleep cycles. He usually feeds straight to sleep at naptime. He's slightly sleep deprived after Christmas but not chronically overtired.

I'm a SAHM and he's a pfb. He bf's more or less on request in the day (at least 6 times day) so I don't think it's reverse cycling.

I think my options are:

(a) night wean
(b) stop co-sleeping
(c) get him going to sleep more independently.

Other than struggling with rocking back to sleep at night, I'm not fussed about night weaning. I don't want to stop co-sleeping and I quite like helping him go to sleep (it gives me time to read ).

I don't really have the stomach for anything involving crying (even attended crying). DH is insanely busy so will have no capacity to help out at all until at least Easter.

Last time I tried resettling without bf he woke just as often (although to be fair that was at 11 months so things are probably different now).

Do you think night weaning is likely to make any difference?

Any other ideas?

It's hard to summon up the energy to try anything. Elizabeth Pantley's description of 'too tired to work towards change' about sums it up.

It might not be an option for you but we moved both of ours into their own rooms when about 15 months and they both woke less for feeds, although it is more of a pain having to get up to do the feeds.

Know exactly what you mean about "too tired to work towards change", is there anything you can do to help yourself? Could DH let you have a couple of lie-ins on his days off? Could you go to bed earlier and eat well for a week to see if that gives you some energy?

As you've mentioned Pantley I'm guessing you've already read this and this?

I'm in a similar situation with my one year old, so I admire you for continuing for another year along this path. The only difference I am about 7 weeks pregnant and this is contributing to my tiredness.

Like you I enjoy feeding him to sleep, but the frequent wakings are starting to annoy me.

I too don't have the stomach for crying, but last night when he woke for the fourth time in as many hours I tried comforting him with other methods. He cried a lot and it was horrible, and after an hour I gave in because he wasn't calming down. However he did then sleep for four hours straight. Not sure what I'm saying really, but I'm wondering whether to try and offer alternatives

wasp poor you. Did you have a look at my first link? There are some tips there.

Thank you, yes I had a look at the link. It is reassuring and I have seen it before at some point. I think sometimes when you are the only person you know who hasn't done controlled crying and sleeps with your baby / toddler it is difficult to get perspective on the situation. Although on MN, there are many advocates of baby-led sleeping / feeding, in RL the reality is it is quite rare, especially after the first six months. It can be quite a lonely path sometimes.

I've just been chatting on another local forum where a mum asked if it was ok to leave her seven week old to cry once fed and changed The consensus was yes

I do know most babies and toddlers wake in the night and it's just the path I've chosen is to be immediately available. I think I may try and night wean between midnight and 5am and see how the next few nights go. I can always revert back if it is too stressful for us.

Sorry, I've somewhat hijacked here. What is your gut feeling about what to do Angel?

Am a bit at leaving a 7 week old to cry but know it goes on. They have spent 9 months tucked up inside you so probably just want a cuddle and some comfort at that age. Did anyone post the research that suggests meeting a babies needs early on means that they cry less in the long run? .

she's 7 weekd pregnant... NOT letting a 7 week old cry to sleep.

Oh gosh it sounds hard.

I don't have to rock to sleep so don't have quite the same problem, but I was feeling v. nervous about weaning my 18-month-old - his last breastfeed was in the night - and yet it has gone quite smoothly.

I stopped his feeds before bed in December - he was quite happy to swap to a beaker of milk instead.

He was still waking in the night (at which point he would usually end up in bed with us) and not settling very well unless he was breastfed, but I decided it was too hard to sort out before Christmas. He used to feed pretty much as he wanted once he was in bed with me, and quite aggressively try to get in my top!

I just decided straight after Christmas to stop. I cleaned out his milk cups ready for if he wouldn't settle without (cow's) milk and then made sure I wore a high neck t-shirt to bed - anything with straps or buttons he can get into too easily.

Anyway the first night he sat inbetween us and cried for a little bit - but to be honest it was mroe like teething sort of crying and I didn't leave him or anything. He didn't even really go for my top.

After that he was fine, and just slept inbetween us without too much fuss (I saw inbetween us, he likes to lie horizontally, usually with his head on my chest or even my shoulder). Last night something was bothering him (I think teeth again) and he made a couple of half-hearted attempts to my top but nothing serious. My boobs have settled down okay.

I don't know how much help this is to you, especially if you're still feeding in the day and want to continue, but best of luck.

No need to apologise for the hijack, wasp.

Did you know there's a common sleep regression at 12-13 months? You can read about it here.

DS suddenly started sleeping much better after 13 months (he woke 3-5 times before then, and only at my bedtime thereafter). Developmental leaps messed it up again, as did teething (he has all his molars now). We had a lovely month or so around 17 m.o. when he woke once at my bedtime 6 times a week and slept through on the 7th day. But it's all gone to pot since.

I think something needs to give. If he'd still feed (back) to sleep, I could live with it but it isn't working.

It's hard to know whether that's a phase or not - feeding to sleep stopped working before, but then started again. Even if it's a (long) phase I need to do something different to keep my back intact.

I'm happy to work on getting him to sleep lying in bed e.g. with me rubbing his back, but I'm not entirely convinced that he's ready for it. If I rock him to sleepy then try to put him down before he's out cold, he goes mental.

I like EP's suggestion of writing a book about your child going to sleep, so I might do that this week to encourage him to want to go to sleep without being rocked.

I might hold off night weaning for a while as it feels a bit too drastic at the moment.

I'll perhaps try putting him on a lilo on the other side of the bedroom tonight to see if that makes a difference. He does like his own space (he has his own single mattress next to mine on the floor) but he's been sleeping closer to me for the last few nights. He loves sleeping on the lilo when we're away

I've been unreasonably tired the last few months - I think it's just the cumulative effect of having to wake properly up in the night.

I do have a short nap most days, but I need to work harder on going to bed at a reasonable hour.

The GP has tested my iron levels, thyroid etc and they're all fine so AFAIK it's not that.

We want to TTC at some point in the next few months so I definitely need some kind of improvement in sleep!

Angel

I'd stop the night feeds and move to a bed if I were you - but you can still feed to sleep and even sleep in with him if you need/want to.

But that's my opinion! I loved feeding DS to sleep until we stopped then sitting with him as he fell asleep.

What aspects of cosleeping do you love? Can you retain those aspects but make changes? Eg move to a bed but set up a camp bed for you next to his so you can go in? DS is in his own room in a low single bed plus a foam fold out bed next to his. In the early weeks, dh or I would sleep next to him as he got used to it and now we use it if he's ill or upset. The bed stays out so he has the reassurance we'll come to him if need be. We also still stay with him until he drifts off although recently noticed that he gets disturbed so we tell him we're going but will be back and he drifts off.

DS is my pfb and I will admit I felt :( at letting him fall asleep alone but actually he did need to - sometimes telling me to go by saying bye bye!!

I miss the night feeds less but these were harder to drop. Sometimes I could resettle by saying all gone or wait until morning but it took DH doing it instead to make a clean break.

Can you develop a mini resettling routine? So with DS he asks for his covers back. So we do that, cuddle then back into bed very quickly. Maybe give water as he might be thirsty, a cuddle then lie down with him?

I like the idea of a mini-settling routine. I think that's what the rocking is at the moment. Often he doesn't take much rocking at all but falls asleep quickly. If he's finding it difficult to settle I sing the song I sing to him at bedtime.

I just need to find another little routine that helps him relax like that - probably by introducing it at bedtime.

What I like about co-sleeping is everything! Actually, on reflection I couldn't put him in his own room without having to reorganise half the house and completely lose the space I use for drying washing on the heated airer, which currently happens in "DS's" room. So I'm not going to do that yet. (We're likely to move in 18 months so it's not a very long-term issue.)

But the lilo would probably be a good indication of whether not being next to me makes a difference during the night. He rarely wakes in the evening when I'm not there, so it might well help. Our room is quite long so there'd be a fair space between him on the lilo and me on the bed. I'll report back.

I should confess - I'm re reading HSHHC to remind myself of the sleep issues for DD, hence my mini routine suggestion. Around that age, it needs to be simple and boring (well he also suggest locking them in the room, but the principle is to reduce the need for interaction as your DS is probably waking up "too much" when he senses you, hence needing to be rocked). I find that DS gets disturbed if we're there but if we give a quick short response he's out again.

Guessing my previous response wasn't helpful, but have you tried any night-time toys? I'm guessing he's too old for them, but one of my friends reckons her toddler still loves going to sleep with his blue (light/music) seahorse on to calm him down.

Sorry, MysteriousHamster, I was eating my lunch when I posted before and got distracted and forgot to say thank you.

Well tonight's lilo attempt was a disaster. He got very excited by it, then only wanted to be in bed, then only on the lilo, then didn't want milk or rocking, then wanted to get up and read one of my books (with ensuing meltdown when I wouldn't let him).

I also realised that there's a tall narrow cupboard he could potentially pull down on himself. It's at the opposite end of the bedroom from where he normally sleeps and he's never shown any interest in it. When he was on the lilo by it he was saying 'cupboard, open' though.

Then I realised that I should have got DH to pump up the double lilo so there was room for me to lie next to him if he wants feeding.

It took 45 mins to get him to sleep instead of 10.

However, in a moment of genius I realised that I can sleep on the lilo, so in theory it'll just be like me coming to bed extra late (ie the morning). We shall see if it makes any difference.

If not, the plan is initially to try to get him doing the last bit of dropping off on my lap as normal but with me having stopped the motion.

Ok I shouldn't but it is funny. Not at the time though! It took us ages to settle DS when he moved to a bed but now he settles very quickly although took weeks

Sorry for disappearing - some of our telephone equipment has been damaged and we've been without the internet for over a week now. Hopefully it'll be fixed next week but I'm not holding my breath.

It's good for my productivity, if not my sanity.

No progress on sleep really.

I'm coming from a different point of view than you so what I'm saying might come across a bit harshly. I don't mean it that way and I hope you can get something out of it.

I am all for co-sleeping when it works for both mum and baby. IMO at 2 years of age a child needs a full night's sleep. They're busy at that age and end up very tired. As things are going at the moment your DS isn't getting anything close to a full night's sleep and it can't be good for him. Equally, it isn't working for you.

IMO the co-sleeping situation just isn't working any more. I used to co-sleep with my DS until it became clear to me that we were both annoying the living daylights out of each other. I moved him to a cot and suddenly he went from waking three -four times a night to waking once at most, and then to not waking at all. I think it was because when he's on his own in the cot he's able to move around as much as he needs to get comfy - he's a very wriggly sleeper. He was very restricted by being in the bed with me. You need to listen to your baby's cues. By waking so often in the night he's telling you that while he loves being close to you (of course) co sleeping isn't the best situation for him as he's not settling well. Something is disturbing him in the night - it could be the inability to move about (if that's the case), it could be being so close to your milk, or it could be that he's too warm. Whatever it is, the fact he's waking up so much and having such trouble getting back to sleep suggests he's just not comfortable in your bed.

I was expecting blue murder when we moved DS. He whinged a tiny bit, probably due to noticing the change, then slept like a log. I used to feed him to sleep too but again it stopped working - he was taking longer and longer to drop off, so I started to put him in the cot awake. It was exactly what he wanted and now I feed him, he sits up to make me stop feeding, I put him in the cot wide awake, he chats for a while, then drops off. I thought I needed to do all these things (co sleeping, feeding to sleep etc) to make him secure. Turns out he's fine and secure without them, he likes his space when he sleeps and my feeding him/cuddling him was actually annoying him. When I thought about it for a while, it made sense to me. I am a very cuddly, tactile person but I cannot be cuddled to sleep and I have to get myself into a certain position before I drop off. DS is exactly the same - he sleeps in a very particular position and does not do cuddly sleeping well. He's 13 months now and he sleeps 7-6 most nights.

The fact that you say he naps really well suggests to me that your DS is the same. It seems logical to me - your DS sleeps best when you're not in the same bed so that would seem to be the right thing to do at night too. Would you consider trying it? I know it's a big leap and you could start out by putting him in the cot at the beginning of the night and putting him back there after the first wake-up then taking him into the bed with you any time after that. That's what I did at first with DS and in the end he just stopped waking up.