Night weaning stories please

[blushingmare]

Hi. I'm just looking for your experiences (good and bad!) of night weaning your over one year olds. DS has been a cosleeping, breastfeed back to sleep baby, which has worked fine for us. But he's 14mo now and I start a new job in September and could really do with getting more sleep than I do now. So I've got him sleeping in his own cot a lot more for the past month and this week am starting on the night weaning.

He's doing ok. Not too upset by it, but just waking fairly frequently. Depending on how I'm feeling, I might bring him back into bed with me, but don't feed until after 5am.

Just looking for some experiences of others to get an idea of if this is going to work and how long it might take.

I didn't night wean but know that lots of MNers have had success with Dr Jay Gordon's method.

What I did was to put them in their own room at 14 months, then went in to feed them. Yes, I was woken once or twice in the night but they were fed and I was back in my own bed in 10 mins? Plus, everyone else in the house slept too.

Not ideal for everyone but it worked for us

Thanks for the reply Jilted. Yes I am loosely basing what I'm doing on the Jay Gordon method. I have always taken "the path of least resistance" with both of mine and just let stuff happen, so actively "doing" something feels a bit foreign and I'm still not sure it's the best thing. I'd be quite happy with what you describe, in fact it would probably mean far more sleep than I've had this week! But I'm not sure that will encourage him to start sleeping more, if he's waking through the night for milk.

With my DD, we ended up being forced into abrupt night weaning by a medical condition. I was upset by it at the time as hadn't planned to night wean. But within a few weeks she was sleeping through, so it really made the difference.

How and when did your's start sleeping through if you were still feeding them?

DS seems to be resisting this more and more as the week goes on. Last night I was up to him every hour and my resolve is weakening!!

Dd woke once or twice for milk at night until we completely stopped bfing, but I never did try night weaning. DS kept on waking long after night feeds and bfing stopped. Sorry if that isn't what you want to hear.

Gah no it's not Bunny, but it's reality isn't it! I wish I could just know, because to be honest if it's not going to get him sleeping through then I'd just settle for feeding him once or twice a night and getting more sleep. I guess the only other advantage of not feeding is DH could get up to him instead of it always being me like that will ever happen the lazy git

Just feign deafness. I can sleep through anything if DH is home

I night weaned ds at 13 months using Jay Gordon's method. It took 2 nights with 1 long crying session each, then about a week for it to become 'normal'. I then stopped feeding to sleep in the evenings, doing a feed before bath instead, and settled in his room with cuddles and a dummy. I always coslept if he woke up after I went to bed. Over about a month he gradually stopped waking at night and now he sleeps through in his own cot. Wakes early, mind. It was definitely definitely worth the upset of the first few days, and I like that you don't leave them. Hope it works as well for you!

I was spurred on by my experience with dd who I thought would just stop feeding at night at some point. I finally cracked at 2.5 years, nightweaned with jay gordon's method and had a similar experience to ds. So glad I did it 1.5 years earlier this time!

I just weaned dd2 (2.6). After several failed attempts, I told her that the boobies" are sadly broken. This was visually reinforced by placing a peppa pig band aid on each breast. I encouraged her to take a look and repeatedly told her matter of factly that they don't work anymore and that there is no more milk but we can have fridge milk. Astonishingly she has accepted this straight away (she was still feeding multiple times day and night) and admired the peppa pig band aids .

Not sure if your dc is too young to buy into a tale like this. I have tried night weaning dd2 before but it never worked.

I night weaned my "classic non-sleeper" at 20 months with roughly the jay Gordon method. Ds had woken religiously every 2 hours from birth and the only thing he'd accept to go back to sleep was boob. We coslept from 9 months and for a long time I was actually happy feeding through the night (believe it or not!) but found out I was pregnant and that was my motivation to get Ds off the boob! First wake up of first night of weaning was 45 mins of frustrated shouting more than crying, "open the boobie!" etc but I felt confident I was doing the right thing and cuddled/wrestled him until he went very cam and quiet and just fell back to sleep. A few more wake ups like this for a the next couple of nights and then....he just slept. He tended to stir rather than fully wake after this and would go back to sleep with just a gentle stroke and "shh mommy's here" but he was still in the bed with me. At age 2 we put him in his own bed. He still sometimes wakes up but nothing like when he was a baby. Sometimes me or dh have to get into bed with him for a bit (he went straight into a full size single bed) If yours is still waking a lot it may be worth re-trying further down the line? Also we'd started reading him to sleep from about 18months rather than feeding to try and get him used to falling asleep naturally.

I was the same, feeding to sleep every time DD woke, so when she was 14 months old we had a week of DH going in when she woke so that milk wasn't on offer. There wasn't much crying as she got cuddles (and I hate leaving to cry). I had to wake DH and kick him out of bed as he never woke first but it worked beautifully for night weaning! DD started to sleep through almost every night after that although I continued to BF her until she was 20 months, including to sleep at night and for naps. Once she was out the habit of waking for milk, I was able to go into her room instead of DH and cuddle her back to sleep on the occasions she did wake. Good luck with it! We're just starting the whole adventure again with three week old DS..,

Brumbles that did make me laugh with the Peppa Pig band aids!! I hesitate to say this, but I think we're seeing an improvement. Last week was hell, but this week I've been able to settle him pretty easily with just a touch on the head and a "lie down". Really hope this continues.

Good luck with the new baby elpth - sleep is such a game with these babies!

Thanks! Yes sleep is a game and one of chance at that (different kids are so variable in what they need!). I'm glad things seem to be improving. Fingers crossed it stays that way!