Breast fed babies - how did you wean night feeds?

[PockerMaus]

My son is nearly 6 months old. He is currently EBF but we are planning to start introducing solids over the next few weeks.

He normally sleeps between 7:30pm to around 6/7am with a minimum of 2 wake ups but generally more. He will scream when he wakes up and the only way to stop him screaming is nursing him back to sleep. My partner has tried rocking him etc but he just seems to never fully resettle and the screaming can be excruciating so I always end up feeding him.

It's hard because 1) I then have to deal with all the wake ups, my partner feels like he's useless and 2) wowee I am knackered and often don't think my son is actually nursing for hunger, just comfort.

Just wondering how others dealt with this situation? Did your baby just eventually stop needing to nurse overnight or did you try other methods?

❤️❤️

@CatsKoalasBunnies123thats not correct. Plenty of BF babies stop feeding during the night way before 12 months. Physiologically once they are over 7.5kg (usually around 6 months), their intake during the day can be sufficient to sustain them overnight. Choosing to continue to feed overnight to 12 monts or beyond is absolutely fine if that’s your choice, but it isn’t necessary and breast fed or formula fed babies can be weaned safely before then.

OP I was lucky first time round that our DD self weaned around 7/8 months. Our son is now 9 months and I’m down to 1 overnight feed and then a feed around 5/5.30 am. He still wakes other times in the night though and settles with gentle rocking (he has been a terrible sleeper from day 1). Presumably you’re feeding him back to sleep from what you’ve described? The only way to night wean will be to stop doing this. As you will need to start reducing how long you feed him for (ie stopping potentially before he’s asleep) and then stop the feeds altogether one at a time. How you do this all depends on what you’re comfortably with - you could rock him instead and try this on the first morning nap + at bedtime (as these are usually the easiest sleeps to settle them for). Or you could start trying to get him to self settle in the cot (which will involve some crying).

to add, I personally wouldn’t swap breast feeds for bottle feeds overnight. You want to work towards getting rid of the feeds altogether really.

Mine stopped night feed at around 8 weeks. I fed them really late and then they did 6-7 hours. That extended to 8 hours before 6 months.

Is that the one by Hannah Love? If so I strongly second that recommendation. She’s a miracle worker. It’s so gentle and achievable. I used one of her mini courses with DS as she hadn’t written the book yet, then got the book with DD.
My son took to it easily, dropped down to one night feed at 6 months then dropped it completely and slept through from 9 months. DD has been a bit trickier and still wakes up some nights (she’s 13 months). I kept feeding once a night until a year and now I re-settle without feeding. Honestly, the resettles without feeding can take as long as a feed did, but she was never very good at transferring back to the cot so this way at least she falls asleep in the cot.

By 6 months, they’ve started to rely on whatever method they fell asleep with to resettle themselves in the night, so they may need some milk to get through the night but if it’s several wake ups it’s more of a habit.

Yes 😄
I bought her course in 2022, as you say before the book. It was great to have all of the weaning advice alongside it. I actually don’t know how I would have got through months 6-12 of mat leave without that course.
DS2 was a bit more resistant but my issue with his sleep was the 5am start to the day rather than night feeding. We still struggle with that 😭

He’s way too young to be thinking about dropping night feeds now, but they either drop on their own (and they don’t wake) or you just say no and cuddle them back to sleep. For me, that was about 14/15 months.

That said, make good use of the easy settling tool you have now while you have it. They will likely still wake at night until 3 or older, so just because they don’t wake for a feed doesn’t mean they don’t wake. It’s very easy to settle them back to sleep with a feed while it lasts. When you no longer do night feeds, you’ll figure out something else that works though.

My experience was similar to @Christmaseree I made sure I woke them up during the day to maximise feeds during the day. I had big birthweight babies which I think possibly helped.

I also did pick up put down from 10 days old and didn’t feed to sleep. I particularly had it sorted with DC 4 🤣 DC3 had undiagnosed silent reflux it was utter hell as she only slept 6 hours out of 24, fortunately at night 😱

I don’t think you should force dropping feeds. They cry for milk because they need it.

my eldest dropped night feeds just after 1 and second child maybe 18 months

That’s interesting about birth weight, two of my DC were 9 pounders and the other 8 and a half pounds.

DS1 - just waited for them to stop. I think he was over 2, maybe about 2.5 when he stopped waking to feed. I definitely left him overnight before he stopped night feeding. He didn't wake up for my mum.

DS2 - had terrible nursing aversion while pregnant, so kept cutting night feeds short and after a while he just stopped asking for them. He was also over 2. He did continue to wake up, though, I sent DH in, which he accepted. He woke up every single night for the next year and then it gradually stopped. He used to have awful nightmares. Did not leave him overnight because it was lockdown anyway so I never went anywhere.

DS3 - decided to stop co-sleeping so settled him back to sleep in his own room when he was about 16 months by feeding to sleep, but was firm with the boundary that he would go back in his cot. This took about 3 months to work, but when it did, he just stopped waking up entirely, surprising me. I probably should have done this earlier with the others! He very rarely woke in the night after this.

DS3 weirdly was the one who absolutely would never accept DH at night - he would go absolutely crazy and react as though he was a complete stranger. Even now he is 4 if he's half awake and has a bad dream and the parent he's not expecting comes in he is furious and upset. So I ended up taking him away with me at 17m even though I had previously thought I could probably leave him - I just didn't feel like it was fair!

I didn’t. He didn’t sleep through until I went cold turkey when he was two. He began sleeping through immediately. It was genuinely hellish! I was going out of my mind with tiredness.

@Christmaseree tiddlers then 😂 when you give birth to the average 2 months old they have much bigger tummies!

Of course 6 months is not too young to drop middle of the night feeds! Sleeping through because they’ve had an 11 pm feed is great! You get a life and baby cries less. Mum gets sleep! Nothing wrong with that.

I think 6 months is way too young. It's not really that surprising for a child of any age to wake up for a drink- do you never wake up and have a sip of water at night? I'd wait until at least 18 months. Maybe consider safe bedsharing and then he doesn't have to wake you up.

Yes, fairly frequently. He'd usually have a bottle/cup if he woke. He knew I wasn't there so it was that or nothing. Actually I think he slept through the night at my mums house sooner than he did at home

I co-slept most nights though so barely even woke up to feed.

My DD would wake 4/5 times a night at 6 months old so I'd cuddle her, if she just wanted a cuddle she'd go back to sleep, if she was hungry she wouldn't (she's not really a crier). She wakes for 2 feeds a night and she's almost 9 months old. There's that many growth spurts and regressions when they're this little that I'm in the camp of ' if they're hungry, feed them' but try cuddling the baby in the night for a few minutes, sometimes they just want their mum. I know that still leaves you doing the wake ups but it does all settle down soon enough.

My kids both bf until age 4. Yes they had started school.

night time feeds naturally disappeared over time. Don’t remember it being a memorable moment tho.

tbh. You are in the trenches now. And will be for another 18m. Regardless whether you bf or bottle feed. It’s tough.

I found bf helped me mother over night and still get some sleep. DH surveyed his mates at one stage and reckoned we were getting more sleep. Because I co slept. It made a huge difference to be able to settle my babies quickly.

yes it was All consuming and often I was touched out
but I had a big City job so was away 730-730 4 days a week. And I travelled occasionally for both work and personally.
So. Bf didn’t stop me having a life beyond the realms of parenting.

this was helpful. As it meant I felt human.

if you haven’t yet had a weekend away. Please organise one. With your mates. Leave baby with daddy. Tell him to only phone you in an absolute emergency. But to tell you everything is wonderful.

I did this when my first child was 5mo. Best mate birthday. Long Weekend in Rome. Left DH with litres of frozen BM and our little baby. He sent me photos. Told me it was all amazing.
took another year before he admitted it was the toughest thing he has ever done. Because of course DC1 would not fall asleep unless lying on his chest. All the milk was gone in the first 24h. Requiring him to purchase formula, which he had never done before!!!

anyway. He got through it and I had an amazing weekend away. Highly recommend.

best of luck.

My children were sleeping through at that age but why not give your child a bottle? Then at least you can share the burden with your partner.

because mine was 10 months when I stopped, and baby was otherwise a good sleeper, slept no problem in cot for all naps and could self settle. We would either hold, rock and ssshh her. We had one night that was difficult and then she did sleep through completely since then. Though as I said I definitely felt at this point she was feeding out of habit rather than needing it.

6 months is still so little and the difference between 6 and 10 months is huge! So so much changes between then even though it doesn’t feel long away.

I also wouldn’t worry about wanting to do BLW. I did that no problem

My son doesn't really take a bottle (we've tried lots of times with different bottles/temps/persons giving it to him etc). I also think he nurses for comfort a lot so I don't think we'd actually be able to get him back to sleep with a bottle. But maybe worth a try again if we're not getting anywhere!

Yes I know he's still quite young, my worry is more when I go back to work next April so just wanting to get a plan in place before I go back as I work 15 hour night shifts.

My first was 12 weeks. Second 9 months

I fed every 2hrs with my first so i think he got enough calories through the day. Second had allergies/reflux so was more fussy

Did they naturally just start sleeping through?