Breastfeeding all night - how to stop!!

[Jenny1565357]

My 9 month old wakes pretty much every hour. He starts off the night in his own cot in his own room. We have a really good bedtime routine. He takes a 45 min nap in the morning and a 2 hour nap in the afternoon. He has a 3 hour wake window before bed. All he wants at night however is to be latched on all night. He cannot self settle at all and I need to get my bed back! I started safe co sleeping just to try and get some bit of sleep myself but unless I feed him back to sleep every hour he screams and screams and I can’t settle him any other way - apart from the car but I would be driving around all night. Any advice is welcome!!!

If you have a partner get them to do ALL night wakings within whatever times you feel reasonable eg 8pm-2am or whatever.
After two or three days baby will wake less and you will start feeling more yourself

They get god awful separation anxiety that peaks around 9 months. Mine also seemed to think that if my boob wasn't in his mouth all night then he'd been abandoned to be eaten by wolves. I ended up at 15 months sleeping in another room while DH handed the night time wakings, night weaned and woke less. Still about 3 times a night but better than the 8+ before!

I breast fed twins first a year. I couldn’t manage to tandem feed, so I fed one twin and as soon as they seemed to have finished properly feeding, that was it, they were off the boob and it was the next twins turn. I just didn’t have the time to let them have a nice comfort suck. They get the main feed in the first few minutes.
Could you try just giving a decent feed and then taking them off the boob?

I found eight to ten months the worst period by far - both of mine woke every twenty minutes for weeks at a time during this period. It's separation anxiety, trying to crawl and move, and teeth. Bloody nightmare. My view was that they needed boob for multiple reasons at this point so I went with it, but it was very hard. Did end though!

Good to know it’s not just me!! Did it naturally get easier then? Or did you have to wean?

I tried stopping this at about 12 months but honestly, just continuing was easier. I tried again at 18 months, I pretended to go out every evening for a week and left ex to it! Ds settled fine for his dad. Good luck, but this is entirely normal and it won’t last forever.

Naturally got easier. After that period it went back to every 2-2.5 hours, and then one of mine self weaned completely at 12 months and I night weaned the other one at 14 months (but still fed on demand in the day). But even without weaning things were a lot easier.