14 month old

[ladywady]

My 14 month old baby is still waking on 3-5 times a night between 8pm and 7am. We have a good bedtime routine, baby goes off to sleep lovely at 8.
Some wakings I try to just cuddle back to sleep, Ive also tried cows milk or water but often baby will only go to sleep on boob.
DH wont go in to baby to settle them. He says he just makes the situation worse but baby gets frustrated pulling on my top and pinching my skin to get to boob.
Baby eats well in the day and drinks plenty of water as well as boob 3/4 times throughout the day. Normally 2 or sometimes 3 naps ranging from 15 minutes to 1 hour max. I would like to carry on breastfeeding but would really like to get some sleep at some point. We have a few nights here and there where baby only wakes twice in a night but thats as good as it gets. I Haven't slept longer than 4 hours in 14 months. But baby wakes every morning 7am almost like clockwork with a beaming smile and is generally a happy baby which i guess is the main thing.

Any tips? Or just keep plodding on being grateful that I have a happy likkle babba?

Anybody???

You could night wean completely. Whilst this will be awful for a few nights it is clearer than sometimes feeding. I night weaned at 11 months and it really helped sleep. 1 bad night, 2 wakeful nights (DD up for 2 hours but not upset) and then she slept through 50% of nights from night 4 (increased to every night over the following month). I still feed her once a day now at 2. It would help if your DH was on board though.

Also we decided anything else was OK to settle, water, cuddles etc but DD decided if no boob was on offer there was no point waking!

Hey bendingspoons. Thanks. How do you go about night weaning all together? I'd been trying to wait 5 hours between feeds just cuddling in between but once baby gets frustrated boob seems to be the only thing to settle them.

We did it at a weekend to cope better with bad nights. DH went to DD when she woke. He cuddled, offered water, milk in a cup, sang, rocked etc. She was upset but being comforted. After a while I took over and cuddled but didn't feed. Might be worth wearing a tighter top! She eventually went back to sleep, probably after about 2 hours.

Night 2 & 3 I laid next to her on a mattress on the floor when she woke. It took about 2 hours each night but she was calm. I offered water but she wasn't interested.

Personally I felt it was easier for DD to understand no more milk in the night than having it at certain times. If you are going to do it though you need to be certain so you don't waver! That's where it is good to have your DH on board. I wouldn't have gone through with it on my own.

Our aim wasn't actually to get her sleeping through the night, I was just desperate to share night wakings, but it worked better than hoped for us. I guess we were lucky! Also DD could settle herself to sleep at bedtime before we did it.