Settling 16mo at night without feeding

[cornflakegirl]

We've decided to night wean DS2 as my nipples can't take being his dummy any more. He seems to be fine with not being fed, and will settle in his cot after a bit of grumpiness / outright wailing / drink of water / verbal reassurance / patting / hand-holding. However, he won't let us leave the room unless he is completely asleep, which means we're up with him for at least an hour - 90 minutes last night. We've only been doing it three nights so far, but I'm back to work on Wednesday, and so far he semms to be settling much better for mr than for DH (although he was quite upset for both of us last night). Any tips for making the process less painful?

Everyone is posting about 15 and 16 mo babies in the sleep topic at the moment! I night weaned DD a few weeks ago at 15 mo. She'd been waking every few hours and not settling well even with the feeds, so I realised it couldn't get any worse. I told her 'milk is sleeping' and she was totally fine with it. Two nights later, I did controlled crying. Never thought I would and never thought I'd be recommending it. But it worked straight away. The longest she cried for was ten minutes which was after a night waking on the first night. Since then, she's fallen asleep in the cot without crying every night. She sometimes wakes once in the night. It take a second to go in, reassure and she's back to sleep again.

That said, I wouldn't have let her cry more than ten minutes, so if it hadn't worked at that point I'd have stopped.

Thanks. I really don't want to do controlled crying. (Although I realise I may eat my words on that one at some point in the future ;) )

try 135 method,worked great with my DD

Not heard of that one - what is it?

There are alot of 16 month insomniacs aren't there? I think it's our defective cohort of babies. Those Leo drama queens. I remember we were all on here softly weeping around 4-5 months for similar reasons. Fngers crossed it gets easier for us all. OP can I recommend Jay Gordon night weaning, it's really been helping us loads and no more than 40 seconds of crying! Amazing... of course DS still isn't sleeping through but he's not feeding :) and he only takes a couple of minutes for my DH to settle. I suspect he's going to be rather more cross when it's my turn.

Oh also I've posted a thread on a similar thing... DS not wanting me to leave the room and being difficult to settle and suspect it might be another stage we have to just wait out?

Thanks - will check that out. He's definitely a drama queen - really wish he'd get on with talking instead of just screaming with frustration when stuff isn't going his way!

Just read Jay Gordon's site. Probably should have found that first - we essentially went straight to days 7-10 so probably a bit late to do it properly now! We are kind of doing what he says though - settling him just by talking to him with the occasional touch - so that gives me hope.