Night weaning tips. Please help!!

[LauraPalmersBodybag]

I'm still bf my 16 month old. Sort of did then didn't intend go this long but it's been mostly good and here we are.

I'm planning on night weaning first, then hopefully weaning her off altogether. Past attempts to cut daytime feeds out/down have been met with so much hysteria I've backed down.

I feed her to sleep every night and do the majority of wakes. My DH does go in but she's often very hard to settle, lots of screaming, trashing etc. Feeding her to sleep isn't a dead cert but it's pretty effective. She started sleeping through when she was 13 months but it was short lived and now she's up all night again (maybe teething?).

I don't know if we should go cold turkey, phase it out...

What's worked for you? All help happily received!

I would go cold turkey. She is certainly old enough not to need to feed in the night. You just have to be strong. In the end you won't be the only one getting a much night's sleep. She will too, do you really shouldn't feel guilty. It's best for her. The more your partner can help the better, though your DD does need to learn that you will also just tuck her up and walk out for 10 minutes.

You might be surprised at how easy it is. It might only take a few days before she starts sleeping through. Be wary of losing it all back to square one the next time she's ill. You need to comfort, medicate, but not cave!!

Best of luck!

I would say the feeding to sleep is your problem rather than needing to night wean. If you are able to change her bedtime routine and have her going down into the cot awake and settling to sleep herself she will probably stop waking for a feed during the night too. It's confusing to her if you feed her to sleep at bedtime but then refuse to feed her if she wakes- presumably she doesn't know how to go to sleep any other way.

drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html this is a really good gentle nightweaning plan to try. Bear in mind though, that stopping feeding won't necessarily stop the nighttime waking, then all you've lost is a handy way to get them back to sleep /comfort them...

You're all totally right. I know that she can sleep for 12 hours without the milk because of her age and the fact that for 2 blissful months she slept! I didnt mean for this to happen iyswim, it just sort of carried on. Whenever we planned to implement a change we got stuck on what to do, when and how, then something would come up or she'd just improve by herself and I'd think that perhaps she'd get there by herself. TBH, id keep up the bedtime feed if it was just that, but enough is enough.

I'd thought about starting next week, but we go on holiday the week after. Is it best to wait until we'll be at home for the foreseeable?

As you can tell, I'm a complete novice.

penelope thanks for the link, I'll have a read. I know she might carry on waking but I'm ready to be done with feeding. I need my body back. I know she just wants the comfort and for both mine and my dh's sanity we're going to need to create something else.