Night weaning 6 month old - first night failure

[roodles84]

Last night I decided it was time to get my 6mo DS out of the habit of waking at 2am for a breastfeed. He's been gaining weight fine and has a 6oz formula dreamfeed at 10pm, so I'm fairly certain the 2am wake up is just habit.

So when he woke last night/this morning, I offered him some water. He took a little bit but mostly just cried. He nearly drifted back to sleep at one point, but then coughed and started crying again. After 1.5 hours, I caved and fed him. He went back in his cot awake but then settled himself with only a few noises.

Should I try again tonight and be more determined to stick with it? Or is time to give in after 1.5 hours of crying? Or should I not bother, just feed him and hope he grows out it?

(He's not crying desperately during the night, more just making noise and wailing)

Dd had a 3am feed until she was 14 months. I couldn't decide she needed to stop, failed miserably. It is natural for them to do this I'm afraid

Feed him.

6 months is very little to night wean. Is he eating much food in the day?

I was going to start a similar thread about my 8 month old, who wakes at about 4.30. Personally I wouldn't be bothering too much at 6 months if he was really crying. The reason I want to wean my DS2 is that DS1 had a similar pattern, and all was fine (as I didn't really mind the night feed) until he was about 1 and started not wanting to go back to sleep. I'm keen to try and get DS2 out of the habit before he's 1 to avoid this. I'm looking for a way to do it without crying though! Me, DH and DCs all sleep on one room so I don't want to wake everyone up.

My DS is 8 months now. At 5 months I stopped dream feeding and he was going 7:30-2 on his bedtime breastfeed. At 7 months when we moved him into his room I started to reduce the length of the 2am feed and slowly his wake up got later and later and now he either sleeps through to 6 and up for the day or wakes at 5, feeds and goes back down for a bit.

Basically they do this in their own time though - don't withhold feeding if they are hungry but you can change the routine to reduce likelihood of comfort/habit waking.

6 months is quite young, they don't really eat much solid food yet so they still might genuinely need some food in the night I think.

He's not eating much solids yet - playing lots and some must be going in because some is coming out, but I don't think he's getting much in the way of calories from it yet.

Sounds like I should just be more patient and wait until he's taking more solids then. We are working on getting him down for naps better at the moment, so I think I'll just focus on that (I am a problem-solver type of person!). Maybe a side-effect of better sleep in the day will be that he sleeps longer at night... (wishful thinking!).

Thanks for all the feedback xx

My DS didn't drop the night feed until he was 9 months!! 6 months is very small I think.

Hmm, I think that with a feed at 10pm he's getting enough and it's a habit, so I'm with you OP. I night weaned at 7.5 months after solids were a bit more established but did it bit by bit.

DS was bottle fed so I went with a standard feed of 5oz as the starting point. I then reduced this by an oz every 2 days. He still woke up after we'd gone down to nil but I went to him and then let him cry it out. He cried for 12 minutes, then whinged for another 5. He hasn't woken for milk since (plenty of other wakings for other reasons though!!)

If you're BFing, it's the same idea but you just count the minutes on your first night and then reduce down a few minutes every other night until you don't offer anything. When you're BFing, your best tool is Dad as the association isn't there.

Personally I think 6 mths is too little to night wean, but all babies are different. Certainly mine was still having several feeds a night until around 9 mths, when he suddenly started sleeping through. (This has been bit haphazard recently though and I've been feeding around 5am when nothing else seems to work.)

I appreciate that you're worried he won't break the habit, but babies can and do often drop habits very easily of their own accord, often with much less fuss than we'd expect.

It maybe helps to view this as something 6mo babies do, rather than a problem to to be solved?

I always found night waking decreased once they were eating food that resembled "proper" meals (ie inc some protein and carbs as well as fruit and veg) but it takes a while to get to that point.

You might find dropping the 10pm feed doesn't affect his waking, and once food is more established he drops the night feed by himself.

My dd just stopped waking for food at 7 months and within a couple of weeks is sleeping 12 hours 9/10 night.

Feed him poor baby. He's still so young!

Well last night was different. He had quite a lot of solids at dinner time, only took 3oz at 10pm, and then didn't wake again until 4am...