At the end of tether with night feeds+wake ups in 1 yr old- do i night wean or sleep train? Please help!

[NervousDriver]

My 1yo daughter has so many sleep/BF issues i'm not sure to begin, and i'm feeling really ground down.

She wakes multiple times a night and for the majority will only settle with a BF. Her crying escalates rapidly from wake up and no amount of shushing, patting, rocks etc works. She cries her heart out until she is fed. Some nights are better than others so she does have the ability to sleep longer stretches and just do 1/2 wake ups but this is so variable.

She has never been great at self settling. At bedtime she has a BF, goes into cot awake and needs up to 30mins of singing to go to sleep. She has never been a drowsy/sleepy baby and for a long time fed to sleep at bedtime.

She is mostly having 1 x 2hr nap during day. This is a bit of a stretch for her but with 2 naps, the second one runs too late into the afternoon and leads to a too late bedtime. She needs pushed in the pram for naps, as cries and cries in cot and i cant take it. She does settle nicely in cot at nursery and fairly quickly apparently!

I really really want to drop the night feeds as i am so exhausted and worried im just perpetuating a bad habit. And surely it cant be good for her to wake up so much? How do i do this?! Do i stop bedtime first and then nights? Is it better to do gentle night weaning and increase the time between which she doesnt feed? Or just go cold turkey and send my husband in each night? I know she will yell the house down practically to point of hyperventilation. I really hoped she would would drop them herself but its not looking like its happening and im not sure how much more I can take. Though i dont relish the screaming i'm just sure what the alternative is?

Oh and she has also started doing 5 30 wake ups and only sleeping 10hrs at night!

I haven’t done this yet as my LO is too young but I’ve read about a gentle night weaning approach... I can’t remember who it is by though. But basically.....

• pick a range of time that you don’t want to feed, so for example 11pm to 6am ( so its a stretch that you will be able to get some decent sleep during)
• for 3 days continue to feed as you normally would during the night but don’t let the baby fall asleep. As they start to fall asleep on the breast take them off and cuddle them to sleep
• for the next three days shorten the feeds that occur during your chosen stretch and then cuddle/rock/sing to sleep
• from then on no feeding during that stretch of sleep, and just rock/ cuddle your baby to sleep.

I understand that there will be some angry cries from the baby but hopefully they will adjust quickly as you will still provide comfort just not food.

Good luck OP let us know how you get on!

Also I remember it said to be exact/strict about the time. So if baby asks for a feed at 10.59pm give it to them. Likewise if they ask at 5.58am try to cuddle back to sleep.

Both. You'll be surprised how quickly it will work - 3 days if you stick to a sleep traing plan. You'll be kicking yourself that you didn't do it earlier.

A one year old doesn't need night feeds!

I had a similar problem. Eventually got a sleep consultant and did sleep training at 14 months. Wish I'd done it earlier. It was so successful and now he sleeps like a champ. My life couldn't be more different!

We did the "gradual retreat" method to teach him to self settle and did set feed times that we gradually dropped. It worked so well. Only difference was I'd gone cold turkey on BF at night at about 11 months as people had told me it would help him sleep through, so we were doing formula feeds at this point.

It's so hard I know... But so worth doing something. Feel free to PM me if you want more info.

I could have written this post about a month ago! My son is slightly younger (11 months) but I too had reached the end of my tether with night feeds/waking. To be fair to him he had dropped down to one feed overnight and he did that from about 4 months old, but we had a week or so of him waking 3/4 times (and we would feed him each time, assuming that's what he wanted) and I'd just had enough so it pushed me into doing something. I suspected he was feeding out of habit for a while anyway but I thought it would just sort itself out and he would drop it eventually but it got to the stage where things were getting worse. We tried giving water and diluting his milk at night when he was about 8 months but neither worked so we just left it. This time round, we were actually on holiday with family and my MIL offered to help overnight to tackle it. We agreed to go cold-turkey and if my son woke up, he would be comforted but not offered milk. The first night he woke twice and was not a happy bunny but went back to sleep with patting, singing and rubbing his back after about 35mins the first time, an hour the second time. The second night he slept through. The 3rd night he woke once and was settled again within 20 mins or so with the same process. The 4th night he slept through and has done ever since (besides teething/illness, which is to be expected of course). It's definitely worth a try but you may have a few nights of hell before it works.

My only stipulation was that he wasn't left alone to cry with no comfort and I do think it helps to have someone outside of the immediate family to help if you can. If your husband is going to do it, it might be good for you to be out of the house (or at least wear decent headphones!) so you can't get involved. Not sure if that's an option for you but sometimes it's best to be away so it's "out of sight, out of mind".

I think if my husband or I were trying to do it, we might have caved in as it's so much easier just to feed them back to sleep but I'm so glad we made the decision to tackle it. Good luck with whatever option you take!

Thank you so so much for all your replies. They give me hope this issue can be tackled! Liefster, my mum actually offered to do the same but i wasnt sure, but your story is very encouraging! Stinky thanks for all that information, i will look into that approach. Kiwiblue i will pm you (if i can work out how).