Salt on nipples, have you ever heard anything SO mad!!

[Loochyloo]

Hi there
am actually posting on behalf of somone else...My italian cousin has a 10 month old boy who is breastfed. He still wakes up about 2 or 3 times in the night and she wants to go cold turkey on the bf and switch to cow's milk in the hope he'll sleep longer( he is also eating 2 meals a day).
Her mother suggested putting salt on her nipples so little boy won't want them anymore!!! Can you believe anything so barmy!!!
Any help/ advice on night feeds/ cutting feeds much apreciated. Unf she doesn't speak Eng so hence me as mediator, but was soooo shocked at the italian" pearl of wisdom" that i felt i (and fabulous mumnetters) had to help!

Salt? Good god! If she wants to try aversion therapy, perfume would work just as well, and harm the child less.

Probably impossible to suggest this to an Italian, but IMHO the best way of cold-turkeying night feeds is not to go to the baby but to send the dh to resettle the child with a bottle of water if necessary. But do Italians 'do' New Man?

Oh, and wanted to say that hte nightfeeds are probably habit at this age, rather than need, and she might want to consider dropping only the night feeds and continuing to breastfeed during the day.

Barking!!!

The waking is a sleep issue, not a feeding one.
There have been other threads on this.

I've heard of people using mustard for this ... but wouldn't that hurt on your nipples?

I agree with PrettyCandles, anyway, having the DH go into settle the baby, with water. Alternatively, you can reduce how long you BF for each time, each night, and slowly take him off BF at night. (This is normally done with CC, which might be a bit hard to explain cross-linguistically).

Cow's milk won't help him sleep longer, particularly not if he's given it in the night - he'll just wake up for that. And as PC says, she can still BF during the day.

Salt could kill a baby. See the thread on pizza-eating that's going on at the moment.

thanks everyone, will suggest the water at night and breast feed in the day. I get the impression she enjoys breast feeding but is just sooo knackered by night waking. Will also suggest dh lends a hand but as PrettyCandles suggets not sure italian men do "new".

Apart from health risk of salt (as if that wasn't enough) what on earth would turning somethng warm lovely and tasty (mummy's breast) into something so horrid do to you psychologically?

Can he have three meals a day? Wouldn't do the aversion therapy thing with mine, and definitely not with salt!!!

PrettyCandles, remember when posting that cynicism doesn't work with text - it needs tone of voice too.

Mind you, I still think that perfume on the nipples (once it had dried of course) would probably do less harm to the baby than salt would. Have you ever tasted perfume!?

I'm ashamed to say that my mother also suggested it to me when I was still b/f dd at 1 year old (which, incidentally, I had no problem with) . My mum's Jewish of European origin, not that that's an excuse but maybe it seems a 'normal' thing to do in some cultures? Needless to say I didn't do it, and yes, I also think it could cause severe psychological damage to have the comfort of a breast turned into something vile.