Using water for sleep training

[PrettyCandles]

8mo ds2 wakes every 2-3h and won't be settled without a feed, so we're trying giving him water instead. But he screams blue murder when offered water. Last night it took dh nearly an hour to settle him using the water, but he then slept 3h, going 7h without a feed for the first time ever.

Is this going to work? The crying is very distressing . And do you have to cut out all the feeds at once? We don't really expect him to go straight through from scratch, but trying to extend the middle-of-the-night gap so that he goes down to 2 feeds between bedtime and, say, 6am.

My DD was waking every three hours for feeds too.
I didn't try to give her water because she was only on BF and wouldn't take a bottle, but I picked her up, gave her a cuddle and a nappy change and then put her back down.
I didn't do that every time, but I did if it was less than about 4 hours since her last feed.
She cried herself back to sleep for the first couple of nights, but soon got the idea.
Even when she woke up, she stopped crying for feeds and settled herself back down.
She continued to wake for one midnight feed, but now even that has stopped and she sleeps right through.
(She's now 7months)
I think it can work for you. It'll just take persistence.
Good luck with it.

I've been posting on the thread about babies who wake every 45 minutes (I'm not technologically advanced enough to put in a link). Anyway, my 11 mo had turned into a terrible sleeper. When he started waking three times a night because of teething I started cosleeping and he then would only sleep 40 min without me, about 2 hours at a time with me and was bfing three times a night. So, I've been trying to get him back into his own cot and cut down on the feeds. I couldn't cope with the crying either but I found that playing sleepy music quite loudly helped settle him. It distracted him from screaming and gave me a chance to pat him and calm him down. Then I just started holding his hand and now I can sit quite far away from the cot and he doesn't scream at all once I'm in the room. Btw, I only started this on saturday so the settling has improved quite quickly (the waking is still a problem).

Also, on Saturday and Sunday I only fed him once at 4 (which I thought was fair enough, after being fed 3 times a night). Then on monday he wouldn't settle for an hour after being fed so the past two nights I haven't fed him till 7 in the morning. The only problem with this is that instead of sleeping from 4 to 8 he keeps waking till morning, but hopefully he'll stop being hungry soon and sleep longer.

Well I've only tried water instead once, last night, and it worked really well. But once doesn't make a pattern, alas. I really didn't think it would work because DS(nearly 11m) can't work bottles so drinks from a Doidy cup so the action of drinking is nothing like suckling. The risk of him flailing around and spilling the water all down his front is huge and you can't do it in the dark cos you need to see the level of the water as you tip it. But even with all those problems it did work last night, so will defo try again tonight.

The crying is really hard isn't it. Even when I keep saying to myself 'crying in a parent's arms is entirely different to crying on his own in a cot' it still feels really bad.

We're not aiming to stop him feeding at night altogether either. Although obviously you hope it might have that effect... We're trying to have a 'not between 10.30 and 4am' rule cos then there's a slim chance of me eventually getting 5 hrs sleep in a row, which would be unimaginably fantastic...

I'm having similar dilemma with night feeds. My ds is bf but has had one formula bottle at 10pm since he was 1 mth old. Then when we stopped waking him up for his 10pm feed he went from 7pm to anywhere between 1.30am and 4am without a feed. Dh had been doing the 10pm and so continued to do the "first night feed" even if it was at 3am. I started to feel a little guilty about this when he was only waking up once throught he night and I didn't get up at all,so I volunteered to take back the night feed and let DH sleep. Of course as soon as I did this DS went straight back to waking at 12ish and then every 3hours thereafter. I can only think that this must be down to the breast rather than the bottle and think I have to consider going back to the bottle at night. I've found that the "night feeds" seem to be a taboo subject, they're just not mentioned in either my Gina Ford book or my weaning books. Does the general lack of advice mean he should be sleeping through by now? I know every child is different but I can't seem to find any diffinitive advice on how to get him off milk in the night. Should I give him water instead of milk regardless of when he last fed or should I only do this if he fed less than 4 hours ago and shouldn't be hungry? Of course I don't want to leave him hungry but I also don't want to give in to feeding him too easily and end up still doing it in 6mths time either.

SamandZack, how old is your LO? We're trying not to feed ds if he wakes during the night, so, rather than wait for him to wake for the first feed (which is generally about 3h after he goes to sleep) we're dreamfeeding him. Hopefully he will learn that he doesn't get fed if he wakes during the night.