Night weaning - Cold turkey or jay Gordon?

[littlestrawby]

Hi all

My 17mo is 'spirited' 😂 and also doesn't sleep well, a challenging combination to deal with! At the moment we are cosleeping and bf hourly, so we've just slid into the worst habits ever (partly due to teething) and there's no indication that things are going to get better.

I'd like to night wean her in the next month or so as I think that will help, and ideally would like to do as gentle a method as possible such as the jay Gordon method. But I'm wondering if, due to how determined and boob-obsessed she is, that might actually just drag things out and make it a more confusing process for her. Would whipping the plaster off and going cold turkey be better?

Anyone been through similar and managed to night wean relatively painlessly?

Do you plan to continue to co-sleep? I found it was easier to tackle one at a time. I co-slept with my eldest til 3.5, but the younger one was getting a bit restless and done around a year. We successfully moved him into his own room and then I've cut down on feeds. I didn't follow a method per se, but I did just cut out all the night feeds (baring emergencies when we all just needed to sleep!) cold turkey, keeping just the bedtime and morning ones. We've now cut out the bedtime one (he has a cup of milk instead), which happened more by chance than anything. I was away for a night and he got on really well with the cow's milk in a cup and we just continued to do it. Now I only feed him in the morning, mostly because he wakes up at 5:30am, and I don't really know what else to do at that hour when everyone else is sleeping. That one will go soon too and be replaced with a cup of milk (and probably one of us up with him in the kitchen for the day while he drinks it). That worked well for us and was completely not traumatic, but he wasn't too boob obsessed so I think that helped.

Thanks for your reply! I was planning on continuing to cosleep to make the transition easier for her, but actually now I think that will just make it more tantalising - being so close to the boob but not being granted access! So I think I will work on getting her back into her own bed first, at least for the majority of the night.

Did you have much protest when you cut out night feeds? I've tried to rock instead a few times and she has just screamed and screamed until I've relented for fear of waking the whole street!

I stopped cosleeping first and feeding overnight reduced itself.

DS was 12mo when we moved him onto a double mattress in his room. I'd feed to sleep then escape and feed at any wakes up. He slept through from about night 3 (obviously illnesses etc meant there were occasional bad nights/periods!). Then he went into a single bed at 19mo.

I had put DD into a single bed at 16mo and fed to sleep but I think the way we did it with DS was better.

Interesting tea, how well were they sleeping before you night weaned? How did you have the double bed set up, I assume some sort of bed guard? Thanks for your reply!

I did Jay Gordon st the same age and it worked really well for us. I moved into DDs room (mattress on the floor) for a few nights and then removed myself.

They slept like typical breastfed, cosleeping babies - on and off all night! DS was probably sleeping better than DD but they both woke quite frequently.

With DS we just put a double mattress on the floor, no frame so he was perfectly safe. We use foam wedges which go under their sheets on their single beds rather than traditions bed guards.