How to sleep train without night weaning

[Februaryschild2023]

7mo wakes every couple of hours and only settles with the boob.

The household is knackered so would like to sleep train (Ferber).

However, I think DS does still need milk overnight (or might not physically need it but has definitely become used to it) so don't want to go completely cold turkey on night feeds yet until he's getting more calories in the day.

My question is, how do you consistently deal with wake ups, and also include at least one feed overnight? Will it confuse him if sometimes I leave to settle without feed, and another time feed him? Any advice much appreciated!

I read a very hardcore guide to sleep training and the advice was that you have to take control of the night feeds. You decide when they’ll eat (and it makes sense to do it when you’re heading to bed) and offer a feed then, but otherwise you stick to the methods you’re following to teach them to self settle.

I should add that I didn’t actually go on to try this because I’m a coward 😆

So you need to reset him a bit so he gets all his calories during the day. When you decide to start. I think you should encourage him to have as much milk and solids as he will in the day, more than you'd normally offer him. Then that night only offer a small bottle, maybe 90ml or so, in the middle of the night when he wakes. I'd give this if he wakes between 1 and 4am. If it's later than this you risk filling him up and affecting his morning feed the next day. Then the next day ge should eat more as he's hungrier. The second night don't give any milk.

We did ferber with DS at 6 months and I'm not joking it took one night! He was only having one or two feeds a night though and I thought there's no way he'll go back to sleep without a feed but he did. I think he woke about 3 times that night. He's slept brilliantly since so I highly recommend it. We are all very happy with a full night's sleep. I know it's tough to implement though!

Once my son could settle to sleep independently (as opposed to feeding to sleep) he just naturally woke up much much less. I still fed him when he cried at night but it went from every 1-2 hours to only twice a night and then this eventually went to one feed a night and then zero. I only sleep trained for bedtime, he dropped the night feeds in his own time.

We managed with our 2 by breaking the feeding to sleep association and by making it 2 hours or so.
We also taught the sign for milk by every feed showing the sign. If waking within an hour my DH would go in and settle first by comforting in the cot with patting and shusshhing. If either DS's got really worked up or just weren't settling then my DH would message and I would come in. If DS's were signing milk then I would also come.

After a few days they both settled into being able to be comforted back to sleep the first wake up. I would feed if after a 3 hour wake up and gradually they just stretched this.

Mine naturally starting dropping feeds as they got older, especially after 6 months when they were eating more. They would maybe want more feeds if they were going through a leap after this age or unwell. Just be aware that if you drop nighttime feeds then it's likely to impact on your supply due to the decrease in Prolactin.

We did a gradual reduction in milk feeds at night. So initially he was feeding all the time literally so I decided I would only feed him every 2 hours, I then increased it after 3 days to 2 hours 15 minutes then after 3 days to 2 hours 30minutes etc. if he woke up before the time I had set I used a different method to get him back to sleep. However if he woke up after the allotted time I fed up. We did a gradual retreat method to teach him to sleep by himself alongside the gradual reduction in milk feeds.

We found it was gentle but effective and I was confident he was getting enough milk / comfort.

This method and lots of other methods was described in the book 'teach your child to sleep'. A very practical guide with information and flow charts and step by step instructions! Useful when you are sleep de!

I waited until my baby was confidently eating solids in the day and started to sleep train (Lucy Wolfe)

I broke the feed-to-sleep association and made sure I was spacing feeds out at least 4 hours. If they woke at night within 4 hours I used the methods to get back to sleep. If it was longer than 4 hours than I fed. But after the first couple of nights they started sleeping through so then I didn't have to worry about it!

Forgot to say - If you are breastfeeding, helps if the non feeding partner does the resettle.

Thanks for all the advice! @Givemepickles that sounds very encouraging, I hope we have that kind of success! Have been putting it off because we have a preschooler who we don't want to wake up, but think we have to just bite the bullet now