Right, that's IT, I am going to night wean her and this time I will bloody well succeed

[ohbugrit]

I posted a few days ago and got lots of lovely posts reminding me why BFing my 19 month old DD is a good thing. However, after another shite night totalling 3 hours sleep I am at the end of my tether -I haven't had more than a handful of nights with more than 4 or 5 hours undisturbed sleep for five years now and I am miserable, grumpy, overweight, run down and a crap mother as a result.

DH is off this weekend so I'm planning to leave him to it for 3 nights. After that he is working nights so I'll just have to tough it out by myself.

She can sleep without a BF but prefers to feed to sleep. I'm thinking of just camping out in the chair next to her cot . And for naps either doing the same or going out in the pushchair. How does that sound?

She's entered a seriously tantrummy stage so I am terrified but I have to do this now - can't go on.

You see I'm not so sure about the not needing night feeds after 6 months thing. DS went through phases where he'd wake in the night with genuine hunger until he was almost 4!

DD is a limpet tonight - feeding on and offor an hour now and waking in full tantrum mode if I try to put her down. Yikes.

Good luck, Ohbug.

Just look forward to the weekend and think of all that sleep you'll get.

ohbugrit - Well, DD's pediatrician said she didn't need to feed in the night at 4 months and that I should stop night feeds for the entire family's sanity. The single best advice I have ever received in my entire life!

The more threads I read like this one, the more thankful I am to that wonderful woman of infinite wisdom as both DD and DS slept through several days after the end of night feeding, and they have slept through ever since, barring the occasional teething or illness.

I have to also point out that the end of night feeding & sleep training is much easier when baby is not able to get up, slam his head against the wall, or threaten to throw himself out of the cot.

Lucky you, Cote! I have to say that my GP has spouted some utter crap over the years (as has my HV). In my case, I'm glad I ignored much of it.

I would take issue with a blanket policy that all babies can sleep through the night, without feeding, from 4 months. Perhaps many have the physical capacity to (many don't) but mine definitely still woke at that age due to hunger.

Both were snack-y feeders by day and, try as I might, I simply couldn't get them to take in enough BM to keep them going straight through the night. ;Even when we started solids, intake varied from day to day.) Every woman's breast has a different storage capacity (and that has nothing to do with size) and babies feed in different ways. I became pretty good at telling what kind of cry my DDs were emitting, including the hunger ones. Oh how I wish they'd not had middle-of-the-night hunger at 4 months!

In my experience, one size does not fit all, sadly.

Well, you can take all the issue you want, except that it looks a bit silly when a layman challenges a pediatrician

Of course your baby woke and wanted milk in the night. That is all she knew. You can, however, change her habits. Cut out night milk, her metabolism automatically adjusts to forget 2 AM and 4 AM as meal times, and she eat/drinks more in the day to compensate.

"Snacking" in the night isn't evidence that baby has a physical need to feed in the night and can't possibly go 12 hours without food. It is only evidence that her eating habits haven't changed yet.

Firstly, Cote, perhaps you'd do well not to assume you know anything about my status as lay or otherwise. Seriously. I'm so incredibly reluctant to get into a 'trump my profession' game but suffice it to say that, until the DC came along, the words "professional negligence" featured highly in my daily vocabulary. What's more, I have (in my lay capacity) had first hand experience of medical professionals whose advice has been so incredibly wrong as to have put my own life in danger. Funnily enough, it's usually the most arrogant and self-assured ones. Coincidentally, I come from a medical family. DF was a paediatrician (but a lovely humble and vastly knowledgable man) whose greatest lesson to me was that it pays to have a bit of humility as a professional, and often makes you a better "expert" for it.

If you were such an expert in the first place, then why did you have to turn to your GP for advice on weaning your DC? Or were you just keeping us all going so you could wave the red rag and then shock us all into submission with you, erm, credentials...

Rhetorical question, BTW, I'm not actually interested in your response as I find you a tad too smug/self-satisfied to waste my time and energy on and I have every intention of hiding this thread.

Sorry OP. I really do hope your night weaning goes well. I haven't got much more lay anecdotal advice but I shall leave you in the capable hands of our resident expert here.

PS. Paediatrician/GP whatever - realise I've wrongly assumed you were holding yourself out as the paediatrician here, but it doesn't change my opinion. I rarely take the advice of the medical professionals at face value. So many of them get it wrong. I tend to get various views and assess things myself where possible. Critical thinking training teaches you not to believe all you hear/read. Sounds impressive what you're saying there but where is your evidence (and your paediatrician's for that matter) and are you seriously suggesting all DC are physically the same?

Rhetorical again.

Cote perhaps you are lucky with your two children wrt sleep. I have an incredibly easy time breastfeeding and weaning DD. Should I then go out giving advice saying mums who struggle clearly aren't tough enough?

And I wouldn't trust every world my doctors and HVs said. They don't even seem to know what the NHS guIdelines are sometimes. I just had that today re-immunisation on travelling with the travel nurse at my clinic. She just said in the end what's on fit for travel on the NHS website is what I should follow. And that I should just ring a month ahead to get whatever jabs I want. How knowledgeable.

ds1 was night weaned before a year and continued to wake nightly, several times, till 2.5. some babies are good sleepers, some bad. luck of the draw whether you have the kind who will sleep through on night weaning imo. op, I hope you have the kind who will!

Sorry cote, have to agree with muck on this one. All children are different and some just won't follow the plan, even if it is 'common sense', as yours is.

I know this from bitter experience and an empty wallet, having spent £ on books and real, live sleep consultants. Our ds outwitted them all. Sure, the plan would work for a few days then revert; work then revert...You get the picture.

After 3 months of stress we decided ds was just not physiologically, psychologically, developmentally or whatever, ready to sleep through. It is easier for us just to compromise with him. So I do bf, but only for 3 mins at a time, so that he keeps his food intake up in the day. If he wakes before 12, dh comforts and we've managed to reduce wakings from 5 x per night to once or twice. I can live with this.

Paediatricians follow CURRENT advice but also all have their own opinions. No single piece of evidence can irrefutably say that babies don't need night feeds. Yes, they may not starve from lack of food but there are a host of other factors to consider: emotional well-being, psychological maturity, separation anxiety, comfort. These are what make us human.

Good luck op.

As saladspinner says, it's not just about food.

Muck - I will ignore that outburst because it was all a bit strange.

I don't live in the UK so maybe that is why my pediatrician experience is much better than yours.

What I see on baby sleep threads is a lot of "They will sleep when they are ready", "They are so tiny, they need you, feed through the night", etc. Then come the threads about toddlers like this one, where OPs say "Can't go on, we are all sleep-deprived. What to do?". By then, they are older and their eating/sleeping habits are much harder to change.

DD's pediatrician said that babies are physically able to sleep through the night at about 4-5 months, and that it is a good idea to stop night feeds and get them to sleep through the night before 6 months or so, before teething, before they can stand up and tantrum, while their habits are more malleable and much easier to change.

I don't think this is all that controversial so I don't know where all the outburst is coming from. All I'm doing is sharing a great advice from a very competent medical professional that worked wonders for my family. Take it or leave it

Right, here goes! Last feed as I write. She's eaten tons today, finished off with an enormous dinner of salmon, carrots, sweet potato, new potatoes, apple and blackcurrant crumble and ice cream, a Milky Way ,three satsumas and a banana. She looks like a pink football but I guess she was hungry! Here's hoping she doesn't give DH too much of a bad time.

She probably won't wake with hunger then ohbugrit- she may have a bit of indigestion though.

Hope you get some sleep.

Good luck, I'm now in the second week of no night bf, although day feeds had stopped for a while previously. The first few nights were really tough but it is getting easier...

So she was fine for DH, woke twice but settled easily, up for the day at 5.30.

I think the problem is me in that she expects to feed to sleep when with me. So I think DH will be on nap duty too this weekend, and then I'll just have to dump her in the cot and bail out when I'm solo. Scared!

Am Nightweaning at the moment and hiss sleep is much better. he was waking every 2 hours but we've got it down to once a night but he only needs to be settled

Well she was up loads last night and started the day at 4. DH was reading her stories and stuff

So she's sleeping as badly for him as she was for me. Maybe she needs to be left to it ... But that seems so harsh. She cane into my bed at 630 and had a BF and was trying to fall asleep so I took her through and put her in the cot and she howled for 15 minutes so I took her down for breakfast.

Nap time shortly then and I'm not feeding her to sleep! Any ideas on what to do next? DH is doing tonight then I'm solo all week (and would prefer to have enough sleep to function at work!).

That is some dinner! I guess we can all agree that she is waking up because of habit, not because she is hungry

4 AM waking is not an early start to the day, it is a night waking. I would recommend you treat it as such (go to her when she cries but don't turn the light on, hug/kiss/pat/"it's night time, so let's sleep" etc and leave the room. Repeat as necessary.

I would also recommend that you don't feed her at 6:30 in the morning and then put her back to sleep. If you fed her because it is the morning, then she should be up.

It will get much better very quickly but you need to be consistent. Give her body a chance to adjust.

'sleep training is much easier when baby is not able to get up, slam his head against the wall, or threaten to throw himself out of the cot.'

Cote surely just because a baby is unable to do the above doesn't mean his distress is any less- it's just easier for us adults to deal with?

Those who have night-weaned - did they just stop asking for a BF when they woke? DD is still demand fed and I am sure she'll wake and look for milk when I go to her tomorrow.

She also has thrush which fortunately isn't bothering her but she's managed to pass to me. Lovely.

I night weaned DS at 20 months . Took about a week with a fair bit of moaning. He did stop asking for boob but carried on waking and asking for water. He still does now at 3 but he can sort it himself now.

Night feeding is good for keeping your milk supply tiptop so I would always be cautious about night weaning too early if you want to breastfeed for a longer period.

Thanks. I've always had a huge supply (caused no end of problems when they were little) so not too worried.

First night solo and she's remembered how much she likes to feed to sleep. She is not impressed at being put in the cot awake!

I completely agree with Cote, actually. Feeds at 4am are night feeds for sure.

How can any adult start their day at 4am (long-term) a expect to be a postive and effective parent?

I was given very 70's advice from my mum go not have DC's feeding in the night by six months. If you haven't stopped by then they will still be feeding at night beyond 12 months.