Will stopping b/f make my 10mo sleep through

[TeddyBear2015]

Hi, I've had a look through past posts and I've been on the old friend Google but no one seems to know the answer to the problem.

My 10month old son has been ebf since birth and has developed beautifully and hits every physical tick box with growth etc. He eats three solid balanced meals a day and has a couple of snacks. During the day he Feeds first thing, morning nap, afternoon nap and bedtime. Between then he will drink milk or water from a cup. The problem lies with nights...

The regular pattern of feeding we have in daytime hours is not followed at night. Sometimes it's every 20mins on a bad night (a worse night he's up for three hours feeding and screaming) or sometimes he will go for every 2-3 hours. He also sometimes has a 4 hour sleep after first going down. He's going to bed at 6pm (as advised by hv) and up at 6am for the day. Selfishly we want him to have a consistent sleep pattern. I don't even mind getting up once in the night but if he's every 20mo s or every hour it's exhausting and his dad and I turn on each other (literally we suddenly turn into horrible people).obviously the dream is a full night but I'm not greedy. I only usually feed him for about 5mins and he's straight back to sleep so can't be that hungry.

The health visitor, both our mums and the lady over the road (all have three children grown up) say if I give up b/f he will sleep through the night. Giving up is a big decision and there's no way back because he will smell milk if I still express. Having looked online though I have the following questions-
1: do we just replace breastmilk with formula? If I'm still getting up every couple of hours I might as well keep feeding myself. I know you'll say his dad can help but I'll still have to make a bottle up and still wake up when he does (once woken up I sometimes struggle getting to sleep).
2: can we just say he gets water in a cup and cuddles but nothing else at night?
3: how will stopping b/f make him sleep better?
4: how are we meant to get him to sleep without milk?!

What I don't want to do is give up b/f and for it to have no positive effect because that'll make me sad I gave it up for nothing. Our hv said if he was a year old she would say he gets nothing to eat at night and she would tell us to stop. But guidelines mean she can't help till then by saying we can stop now. It's all VERY confusing.

I want to stop if it makes things better but don't if it'll make no difference.

Thank you

Also how do I stop if stopping is the answer?

Sorry... I also need to know if I can stop giving him anything (except water) at night. I know 6-12 is meant to be 20oz of milk a day but he's not doing that even with all the night feeding because he eats so much he's full through the day.

I didn't find the hv that helpful with advice on sleep or feeding at night beyond six months...

We night weaned DD gradually between 11 and 16 months. She wasn't feeding as much as your DS and was more settled by the sound of things - generally three feeds around 11pm, 2am and 5am with her resettling after 5am for about an hour. I can't really remember the details but we gradually pushed back the first feed - no feed before midnight, no feed before 1am etc, and then cut to two feeds and then one etc. By 16 months she was going through until 5am and the bf at that time was no longer resettling so we traded night waking a for early mornings but still so much better than before!

Very dependent on DH to get this to work - he would go in and cuddle/Rock etc her back to sleep. We tended to have a big 1-2 week effort that made a change and then we'd leave it for another few weeks to try to make a further change.

I think we offered water but she wasn't that fussed until probably around the time all night feeding stopped.

This approach worked fine for me too. I loved bf DD (and her DTB who luckily was satisfied with dummy and cuddle if he ever woke) but at 16 months I felt done - really happy end to a happy experience if that makes any sense!

Good luck.

I've got a 12 month old that is breastfed, he gradually began sleeping through about 9months. I would think you could at least get him into a better sleeping pattern without giving up breastfeeding. Have you tried getting your dp to get up at night, quick cuddle and then putting him back in his cot. ( I'm assuming he sleeps in his own room). It doesn't sound as though he is feeding due to a need for nutrition overnight, more for comfort. There are various methods you can use for helping him to sleep better. What we initially did with my ds was on first waking I would feed him and then after that my husband got up and used a combination of lifting him for a cuddle and then putting him down and shush patting him. Within a week we got away from the hourly wake ups. Try whatever works and feels right for you and your baby, there is rather a lot of controversy about sleep training etc. Good luck

No, I bf DD till she was 3 she start dropping feeds and sleeping through at around 2 years once all her teeth were through.

You may well break the cycle of habit of waking up for a feed but then they wake up for other things (developmental leaps , teething , illness, being cold, being hot, just because they want to) it's much easier to breast feed a child back to sleep than anything else . You could express and have your partner do the night waking a though or co sleep.

Babies have a set quota of milk for the day so if they are not getting that quota during the day then they will look for it at night instead, so you could try encouraging longer feeds during the day.

Personally I wouldn't choose to stop breast feeding at this time of year due to the amount of bugs and illnesses going around . At 11 months old my Dd got a stomach bug that lasted over a week , the only reason she wasn't hospitalised for dehydration is that breast milk is digested quickly so whilst she was still Vomiting she was ok.

You don't want to hear this but stopping bfing didn't fix my DS's sleep.

However, stopping (or cutting down) night feeds by my DH taking over the nights did mean that I got more sleep which was important as I was losing my mind.

You can stop feeding at night without stopping bfing completely.

We just stopped feeding between 11pm-6am from 6 months. Just they were still breastfed in the day. I don't think after 6 months they need feeding during the night

Routine roughly
9pm settle to sleep on us/ floor in living room
11pm last dreamfeed and take to bed with us
8am wake up
Nap 3 times between 8am-9pm

Mine have all
Been like this ( not quite as frequently waking up though( but up a few times for a feed in the night -
My answer was co sleeping - at that age they can more or less help there self and you can feed them with minimal disruption to your sleep! If you do want to stop maybe try and wait another month or so then you won't have to use formula you can go straight to cows milk.

Stopping breastfeeding at night made no difference to DS's sleep. He was still not sleeping through until he was 3.
In terms of stopping we just started DH going in and offering cuddles and water, it made no difference though.

I think the best thing to do is co sleep in your situation . You don't sound like you want to give up breast feeding. Co sleeping will mean that you can feed and sleep at the same time.

The reason Formula often makes babies sleep longer is that it takes much longer to digest, if you wanted to you could just try a bottle before bed and see if that helps just remember any change in diet can lead to constipation.

Some children just don't sleep through regardless I have a friend whose child woke up regularly every night until he started school.

Also something lots of people don't know is that it is entirely possible to relactate once you stop (even women who have never been pregnant can) so if you stop and regret it you can start again it also took a year before my milk totally dried up.

DD stopped feeding to sleep at 13 months and at about 18 months I started telling her the milk was asleep at night and she could have water instead. She's 2.7 now and still doesn't sleep through. One day!

Just to agree with pp's I stopped bf with mine at 18 months each and moved into there own beds they all still woke in the night a few times for another yr or so.

Every child is different so there is no way to predict what will happen. He's after comfort from the sound of it. I personally think that's fine and nothing to worry about. It is utterly crap when you don't get enough sleep yourself though. Nothing is set in stone and it will get better. If you cosleep it makes breastfeeding at night so much easier so that could be worth trying if you haven't already.
I fed at night till 15 months and then stopped completely at 18 months. There were definitely times up till then and since that I was glad of bF or wished I could still do it. Its fantastic if they are ill.

It didn't stop night wakings here but it did help. Within a week she went from multiple wake ups to 1 wake up a night for a bottle. I didn't make bottles up in the night, just took up a bottle of the ready made formula and a sterilised bottle. DH did a few nights a week too.
Co sleeping didn't work for us at all. Even though she could 'help herself' it still woke me up and meant I got no restful sleep whatsoever.
We did it by DH sleeping on her floor for a week and resettling with cuddles/a bottle if necessary. Couldn't have done it without DH committing to do that until it was sorted.

Thank you everyone for your help. It seems there's going to be no way of stopping him feeding/waking till he's ready and I don't want to just swap me for formula so it's pointless giving up. I was planning on stopping February/March time anyway because I want to see him through winter and starting nursery just in case there's nasty bugs to deal with and I want to help him through that.

I know I'm being selfish but sometimes the idea of more sleep is very tempting. Also he bites A LOT and it's hard not to squeal in the night when I'm not expecting it the idea of co-sleeping isn't something I can do because I'm terrified he'll fall out of bed and even putting the little side guard on won't help because he will climb it and fall from higher! Plus he's a squirmy little monkey and if he doesn't have his space he'll not sleep (God help his future wife!)

The health visitor said if he was a year old she could tell us to just not feed anything at night because he's only waking up out of habit and not because nutritionally he needs it.

Thank you again

You are not being selfish teddy it's really hard being sleep deprived affects your whole life I'm just about to go back to work (4th and Last dc) is 11 months and I'm worrying how I will actually function at work like a professional person I can see light at the end of the tunnel though maybe in about 2 years I'll get a full nights sleep!

That's the thing. I started back at work last month which is why I think he's dropped daytime feeds (he drinks plenty of water and milk from a cup during the day and still has a big morning and night feed). Working on two hours sleep is a nightmare and I couldn't tell you have the stuff I didn't finish!

The idea of keeping him up till 11 is like the opposite we were told by the hv. We were originally putting him to bed at 7-7.30 and told this was too late and we were teaching him to fight sleep so our new routine is:
6am get up.
7.30am breakfast
9-10 nap
12.00 lunch
1-2 nap
4.30 dinner
6pm bed

Since starting we have more good nights maybe than bad but a good night is still up 4-5 times for a few minutes and at times you can set your watch by so it's habit more than hunger. I like the idea of holding off feeding for slowly longer periods by sending his dad in. He can sleep for over four hours nearly five I. One go so even if we got a routine of four hour sleep periods I can live with that forever!!