How to night wean EBF 9 month old?

[FelicityKitKat]

I sleep trained my EBF 9 month old at 7 months and he now goes to sleep by himself at bedtime with no crying but he still wakes every 2-3 hours as I’m still feeding 3 times per night. I’ve still been feeding at night as solids have been slow progress so I wasn’t confident he was getting enough calories during the day. Until recently, his night feeds were still hearty. But I think they’re starting to become more habit/comfort now, perhaps as he’s starting to consume more solids?

I don’t want to drop all night feeds at once but I was wondering how best to gradually night wean one feed at a time? I know I could use sleep training techniques again but I hated it so would rather do it gently.

Any tips welcome!

The idea is to try and resettle him without feeding or even picking up - make feeding the last thing you try.

It's baby dependant, but I found the first feed of the night easiest to resettle. Melatonin is strong in his system, so compined with a dark room and white noise it was usually fairly easy to get him to drift off again. You need to send the message that it's not time to feed but time to sleep; Mummy is still here even though it's sleep time.

Obviously no talking/eye contact. You can shush soothingly if you want.

He won't drop all night feeds all of a sudden, but if you can start to get him asleep without feeding then he will start to do it more often. For us, it took a couple of weeks before night feeds were a thing of the past - though he was starting to get the message after a few days, and the rest of the time was just reinforcing the message.

Hmm not sure on that. Even Sarah Ockwell-Smith says 12m+

My son used to feed all night too even though he could self settle. They finally reduced down and he completely stopped at about 13 months.

I would try and settle another way for the first wake up, as others have said he'll be most tired then. With my son I started to cut the length of the feeds down, so just feed for 1 min and put him back in the cot. Then shorter and shorter.

Another thing which I think may have helped is that I used to be the only one to put my son to bed. Then one night I cut myself really badly making dinner and had to go to A&E so my husband had to do his bedtime and he slept the longest stretch he had ever done! So perhaps try feeding then Daddy reads the story and puts him in the cot (if you don't already share it).

It's a minefield but know that you've hopefully been through the worst of it.

I did controlled crying at this age to night wean. I found with both mine that feeding to sleep stopped working around this time too.

Instead I'd rub tummies, give back comfort items, shhhh them but not pick them up.

It took about 4 nights to fully work. Then if they woke in the night I knew it was because they were poorly / needed something.

On my knees at 9 months with ds. 5 or 6 snacks all night. Urgh. Sent dh in to resettle instead of me. Slept 7 til 7 on the third night! Now 8yo that kid still loves his bed and sleep!