Night weaned but still waking and takes ages to settle!

[Champagne16378]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post after months of reading other peoples' experiences. I am now struggling to find anyone in a similar situation to me and desperately need some advice/reassurance.

Over the past 5 nights I have been night weaning my 11 month old DD. She is exclusively breastfed and eats a good amount of solids in the day. We had gotten into a habit of bringing her into bed with us on her first wake up (she is in her own room) and bed sharing, where she would snack on my boob for the rest of the night. I found I wasn't getting the sleep I needed by bedsharing, and wanted to night wean in the hope it would reduce her wake ups at night.

The first couple of nights were hard - awake for 60-70 minutes, lots of that time not happy and searching for the boob. I held her and comforted her, as did DH. Things improved on the third night where I went in twice to put her dummy back in and rub her back, which seemed to work. However the past two nights she has woken and I just can't get her to settle back to sleep again. She doesn't seem to be searching for the boob anymore, but after rocking and shushing her, I put her back down and she immediately rolls over and starts crying, standing up against her cot. It has taken 1.5 hours and 45 minutes respectively over the past two nights.

I've worked hard over the past few months to help her self-settle to sleep, so now she goes down around 7pm awake in her cot, no problem (this took a lot of work by the way!). So I don't understand why when she wakes at night she can't seem to do this again? It's almost like she feels I need to be with her to fall fully asleep. I don't want to try a cry it out method as it would break my heart and I don't think she would react well to it in the night (I left her to go to the loo last night and she was almost inconsolable after just 30 seconds!).

I really thought that night weaning could result in her sleeping through the night. Now I feel exhausted and lost. Do you think it might just take a few more nights of the same, and then she might sleep through? Do you think there's a faster way I can settle her when she wakes? Any advice or reassurance would be great - I feel really lonely as all my mum friends have their babies now sleeping through (either through luck I guess or having done cry it out).

Thank you in advance ♥️

Sorry OP I think that 11 months is a little too young to night wean, I think she could be genuinely hungry. So yes, there is a faster way of getting her to sleep, that’s feeding her

The earliest recommendation I’ve seen for night Weaning is 12 months.

Also, she’s probably finding it doubly hard as you’ve stopped taking her into your bed as well as stopping feeing her. Could you do one at a time? So maybe keep her in her own room for now but feed her when she wants it?

Can I ask how often you feed her in the day too? Is there any chance you could get one or two more feeds in during the day to tank her up a bit?

If you do really want to night wean, this method is very gentle and can be used from 12 months

Hi, just wanted to say that I night weaned at a similar age with my DD. We stopped co-sleeping at about 9mo and then night weaned at about 10mo. It wasn’t until she was about 13mo that sleep actually improved drastically for us. I think a lot of it is developmental and they’ll just sleep longer periods and deeper when they’re able to.

I know that might not be the most encouraging thing to hear, but it sounds like you’re doing a great job and laying the foundations for her sleeping better when she’s able to!

Oh and I’ve just seen the post saying that all of your friends have their babies sleeping through. This is very unlikely to be true. About half of parents lie about how much sleep their babies get.

Also, according to one study half of 12 month olds studied require some sort of parental intervention to help them get back to sleep.

You definitely aren’t the only one with a waking 11 month old OP, no matter what everyone else is telling you.

Thanks @JiltedJohnsJulie and @Razmataz92, really appreciate your comments. @Razmataz92, it gives me hope that perhaps things will settle for us too within the next couple of months. I guess it's the not knowing what each night will bring which makes it harder.

@JiltedJohnsJulie I take your point about her being under 1 year. Only seeing as she is now merely a few weeks away from 1 year old, do you think it is likely she is getting hungry? She is around the 80th centile for weight for her age. For the past couple of nights since I read your post, I have been feeding her for any wake ups after 5am. Perhaps once she turns one I can look to push this back.