Pleeeese help me - baby stuck on night time bf at 12 months

[Andanotherthing123]

Ds3 is 12 months and still bf 2-3 times during the night. He will not take a bottle or any manner of cup and just screams and cries till I give in.

He dropped daytime bf during the day when he was 10 months old and is quite happy to have a cup of milk before bed, but wants to fall asleep while having a bf.

My other DS' both took a bottle at 8 months and preferred a bottle feed from 11 months, so I really don't know what to do this time round.

I'm exhausted with managing nighttime feeding, 3 kids and working. Plus (and most importantly ) I'm booked for a girls weekend away in June so I have to get it sorted before then.

Please help me devise a plan!

Does he eat ok during the day? Our ds was waking very frequently during the night at 11 months and taking very small feeds (he was ff by then). We went cold turkey on the night feeds, just had to rock/cuddle him to sleep instead of feeding. It was hard but for some reason ds settled better with dp than me. We then did a version of cc to ditch the rocking. I just would not lift him out of the cot, just lay him back down and do some back rubbing for a minute then leave (well we have a bed in the nursery so I was still in the room) him. The first night he cried on and off for 2 hours. It was awful but once we'd started I didn't want to "give in". The second night he woke once for around 20 minutes of back rubbing etc and the third night he slept through.
At 12 months he really doesn't need milk during the night, my ds certainly didn't. Our "this can't go on point" was when I got pregnant again and was just soooo tired but now I wish we'd done it sooner. He still gets up very early (5.30 Grrr) but at least I get a solid block of sleep). Will he self settle for naps (I assume so if you're working)???

He goes for naps after a little bit of rocking and has a fairly regular routine of mealtimes and daytime naps. He's a good eater and I deffo hear what you're saying about not needing milk during the night. When you went cold turkey on the night feeds, did it take you a long time to settle him with rocking and did he get very sad? DH and I are off work during half term and have agreed to try cold turkey then. We are both hopelessly soft at giving in but I think I've reached the end of my tether with night feeds, so that will motivate me!

I have been shit at getting any of my kids to self settle - I even promised DH when we decided to go for number 3 that I would be better at getting a good sleep routine for this baby but he's been the worst of the lot!

He took the night weaning with reasonably good grace actually, far better than I thought he would. It was the rocking that was harder. He would wake up and need a good 45 minutes of rocking and ssshhing until he was fast asleep then putting into his cot. This was happening twice between 12 and 6 am so it was totally unsustainable when pregnant! I'd already got him to the stage where he'd go down for a nap easily though, as in awake when I put him into his cot and left him to self settle so i knew he could do it in the day. I'd maybe start with the naps now, no rocking just putting him down then at half term tackle the night???
Yes,he was very sad, but only for those two nights. If one of you is more liable to give in then the other should do it. With us dp would never have withstood two hours of up and down crying-he'd have just rocked him so i had to do it. I never really wanted to do any form of cc but waking every 90mins-2 hours for 5 months and being sick all day whilst knackered hardened my heart!! It was awful hearing him cry (I promise I'm not a monster!) but it was getting to the point where I was just in tears in the night it was so frustrating-I knew that everytime I picked him up and rocked him I was reinforcing the behaviour and making it worse so even though it was crap it actually felt good to be Doing Something rather than struggling on.

Thank you for your help-we have definitely resolved to go with your suggestions and dh has offered to do the nights with ds while I sleep on the sofa bed as I am currently 'parent most likely to cave in'. The trade off being he gets a long lie in the next day!

If you crack it can I hire you for consultancy work? I have a four year old who matches your description

We also went cold turkey on night feeds with DD. She was the world's worst sleeper though so we had to do something, she is 7.5 months and eats well and has plenty of milk during the day so I was sure she could go over night with no milk. We did similar to what Nicky suggests. Feed, story and into cot. Pat/shush, pick up if really kicks off but then put back down. We also had 2 hours of crying the first night but honestly it was no way near as bad as I thought it would be and it worked very quickly. Just tell yourself that you won't feed until the morning and tough it out, you will be surprised at how quickly he cottons on.