Cutting down in minutes to night wean. Unsure of next steps?

[Littlehousesomewhere]

I am in the process of cutting down night feeds for my nearly 2 year old. We are down to 2 feeds a night with each feed lasting only 2 minutes.

My eventual aim is to cut out night feeds completely in the next few weeks and then aim to stop bf around his birthday, so I have a couple of months to do it all in.

I am unsure of my next steps though. Do I cut down to a minute for a week or so and then 30 seconds for a week and then nothing?

Is he meant to start thinking he shouldn't bother waking as he isn't going to get much milk?

He gets a bit upset when I stop him, and cries but he does go to sleep eventually. He still is waking the same as he was when his feeds were longer though.

Also I am concerned that cutting night feeds is the opposite of 'dont offer don't refuse'which I am sort of doing during the day (although I do distract him if i really don't want to feed him).

I would really appreciate some advise from people who have some experience with this.

Anyone? I would live to hear how others who have shortened night feeds have managed.

Love

When I shortened night feeds, I did one night of 6 minutes, one night of 3 mins, one night of 1 min then no more night feeds. The main benefit was that I realised he didn't need the milk as such, and I think he realised the same. After the feed I put him in his cot awake and cuddled him over the bars if he stood up and cried. Eventually he laid himself down and went to sleep. After night 4/5 he started sleeping through. Good luck!

Meant to say, ime he won't sleep through until you stop feeding at night. Sorry!

drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

I tried this, from Dr Jay Gordon, for a super-gentle nudge towards nightweaning when DS was 2 and I was fed up of the broken nights. It did seem to work and is not at all CIO in approach. He did wean altogether within a few weeks though

That is really interesting that you both shortened the feeds over just a few nights. I have been doing the 2 minutes for the last few nights and was planning on doing it for a week before going down to a minute.

Thanks for the link moaning I am actually hoping that ds stops completely once we have night weaned.

I very much went for trying to just give him a cuddle instead of a feed, and if he insisted on feeding, then feeding him. He stopped insisting basically.

Having said that, he is 4 now and still gets into my bed during the night quite often. Say, at least once a week. I just let him get on with it but give him lots of praise when he stays in his own bed all night. And these days he usually creeps in without me waking up TBH

That sounds like a lovely and peaceful transition for weaning. I really hope we can achieve the same.

Thanks I do look back on that as handled fairly well I suppose. Both the DCs are right little monkeys now though, there is very little peace most of the time!

I surprised myself with my AP-ish tendencies, I'm very middle of the road really.

I thought I would update since it has been going really well.

I cut back to feeding for only one minute after I posted this and since then he has slept through twice! The other times he still woke once or twice and went back to sleep pretty quickly with just a few seconds of crying.

Tonight if he wakes I think I will shorten to 30 seconds.

I am really hoping he just continue to improve himself and sleep through more often so I don't need to deal with him having no milk at all and getting upset. I would love to skip that final step but we will see.

Just to add these are the first times he has ever slept through. He went from just after 7pm to just before 6am.