Those of you feeding toddlers - nighttime feeds?

[Fazerina]

I know there are many of you out there:)..

My DS is 24 months and still feeds loads. I just wanted to reflect our bf habits on others and hopefully find out ours aren't complitely abnormal ..

DS still feeds to sleep for naps and at BT and wakes up once in the early hours for milk. He also spends a big part of the early hours of the morning on the boob. In addition to this, he usually has one feed during the day (and the naptime feed of course).

I work from home and don't really have a problem with the amount of times DS bfs, but I'm beginning to feel rather alone in this, as I know no one in RL in the same position and sometimes find myself wondering if it's 'normal' for a 2-year-old to bf to sleep and wake up in the night to bf..

Hi fazerina I recently finished bf dd2 at the grand old age of 4. For a lot of the previous year we were down to one feed at bedtime and prior to that were feeding on waking and bedtime.

Dd fed during the night til she was 3. I was exhausted but wasn't sure how to stop and still wanted to co-sleep. One night when she tried to feed I was so tired I just shushed her a bit and said 'in a minute' and to my surprise she drifted back to sleep. Every time she looked for a feed I did the same thing and within days she was sleeping through.

I didn't worry about normal and just did what worked for us. I don't know anyone who fed past a year anyway so I was far beyond what my friends would consider normal.

I think it is normal for a child to seek out something that comforts and satisfies them.

I do know it is difficult and I found I got very little sympathy if I complained of being tired or had the occasional whine about it.

I will say that my dd is one of the happiest, healthiest little people I know and I am glad I fed her as long as she needed it.

I presume you co-sleep. There is an interesting article about night weaning a co sleeper. I'll try to find it.

I am feeding my 2.10 yo and she would gladly feed more often than I let her! She has one feed at night and will occasionally wake up in the night (a bad dream, usually, or falling out of bed) and needs a feed to get back to sleep. I rarely feed her during the day now - I distract her with toys/tv/hot chocolate if she asks for one, unless she has hurt herself, in which case I give her a feed. She sees her baby brother being fed and decides she'd like some, too, please.

If she isn't up and downstairs for breakfast straight away in the morning, she will ask for a morning feed that i usually give her. I think if you're happy, it's fine. I struggle with the vaginal dryness and lack of libido that bf causes in me, so i will be trying to wean her properly in about six months time, when I hopefully reduce the number of feeds her brother has as well.

one thing that is quite promising for us is giving her normal milk from a bottle - bit of a regression, but she seems to like it, so I'm going to rty that later in the year, too.

I am glad i fed her for this long and won't stop until she's ready - i will try to encourage her, but won't force the issue!

Hello both and thank you so much for taking the time to reply. It's always encouraging to know you're not alone especially as it seems quite uncommon to be breastfeeding a toddler and co-sleeping at this stage..

froggiebabies was it the Jay Gordon-article you meant? I've been pondering on giving that a go, but have been too lazy and tbh not bothered enough by the night feeds yet to really give it a go. Also, I'm a bit concerned as to what will happen in the night if DS wakes and no longer gets a feed, as I cannot imagine myself not being able to just plug his mouth with the boob and go back to sleep:)..

As I see that you both have more than one DC, I was wondering how you manage with co-sleeping with the smaller baby and toddler? Do you sleep with both or does toddler sleep in their own bed/with DH? We've decided to start TTC soonish hopefully and I was wondering where DS would sleep if we have a newborn..

I bf on demand at 18mo. I do it mostly in private now because he's so easily distracted the rest of the time. He feeds on demand through the night too (we cosleep). Not planning on changing any of this for the foreseeable future either

Ps I think it's entirely normal for older toddlers to bf frequently in the context of how babies have been brought up historically and globally, as someone said in another thread recently, look at dummy use, the sucking instinct doesn't go away until much later, 4 or 5 years. It's only in our recent western history that bf has been seen as something only for infants.

I'm still BFing my DD who is 17 months, just this week we've gone down to no feeding between 9am and 4pm. Mainly because I need to do more work (I'm self employed). But I still feed to sleep and during the night, I don't know how much it's a bit of a blur and she has a morning feed about 8.30. I have no intention of changing the night time routine until she's eating more solids during the day and she doesn't need the comfort during the night. Interestingly she has been ill recently and the only thing that would calm her down was comfort feeding.