Anybody who night weaned/sleep trained? Advice please!!

[Mississippilessly]

I've just started with a sleep consultant. She has given me a brilliantly detailed plan for schedules and a plan for gradual retreat. However she has advised me night weaning first.

Usually DS goes to sleep in his cot but comes into our bed fairly soon.
So tonight every time he wakes I am rocking him back to sleep, waiting about 10 minutes, and then putting him back.
But what is this teaching him? I dont understand. Everytime he wakes he will cry surely? I cant see how either of us will get any decent sleep. Is the idea that if he doesnt get milk he will stop waking?! Obviously I will ask her tomorrow but right now im feeling utterly daunted. We cant go on with his sleep so bad but I cant see how this will sort things.
Please help!

My situation was different to yours I think. But we did find once we night weaned DS that his sleep dramatically improved. But we didn't night wean him till about 16 months old I think it was.

It was hard work and we done it very slowly but eventually we got him to realise he can settle without milk.

We then moved onto him being okay to sleep and wake and resettle without me being there.

Similar to previous poster , we night weaned at 12 months which took about a week for him to get the hang of the fact that's there's no more milk at night time .
At 13 months he then suddenly self
Taught how to self settle and to sleep through the night .
not a lot of help I'm afraid but I do think they will learn how to sleep properly when they are ready and I'm glad I didn't put my little one through the stress of sleep training .

coffeeaddiction thanks for the guilt trip there. Hopefully you can see from my OP that im feeling pretty cut up about this.

TwittleBee it's so frustrating because he only feeds for about 2 mins but he does it so frequently!

Sorry , wasn't ment to guilt trip but I can see how you can read it like that , apologies !

I just mean to say it's stressful for both you and baby so if there's anyway of doing it in a slightly more gentle way then it might be better for both of you .

I'm certainly no expert but the way we night weaned was stretching the time between bottles in the night , so one at 7:30pm bedtime then we would try and make it til 3am then the next night 4am and so on .
For this my husband slept on the sofa for the week while I cuddled and settled my little
One in my bed 😊

Sorry for the guilt , no one needs any extra mum guilt !

No I'm sorry. You're absolutely right. He's now in bed with me feeding.

We night weaned, got rid of the dummy and sleep trained all in one go at 7 months and I was terrified! But it was actually ok. Once they stop associating waking with food/dummy/rocking etc it does help. We had a sleep consultant and did gradual retreat. He is now 18 months and is an amazing sleeper (he used to be awful. 20 min catnaps during the day and up every 10 mins from about 3.30am!😩)
The one thing I would say though is you have to be consistent all the time if you want it to work. Even if you're shattered at 2am....it will be worth it!
My DS is no worse for sleep training- it has actually benefitted the quality and quantity of sleep he is getting.

I might weaned gradually at the same time as teaching ds to go to sleep without a feed. So the night weaning I gradually increased the time between feeds by 15 minutes every 3 days (or so) and simultaneously I gradually reduced the support I gave him to go to sleep (from feeding, to rocking, to holding, etc etc) I only did this at bedtime and if he woke in the night I would usually rock him.

The main problem I felt with ds was that he did not know how to self settle and that he was getting all his milk at night and not in the day. By gradually weaning and reducing support I was teaching him how to self settle and reducing his reliance on night milk.

How old is your lo?

MoleMummy thanks. Yes I know you are right and I've failed on night one.
I just cant see the sense of getting him to sleep on me then putting him in the cot. He is bound to wake up upset?!

DS is nearly 8 months.
Feel a complete failure now.

We night weaned early. Can't remember when, 7/8 months I think. Just substituted water for milk. She lost interest fairly quickly.

We sleep trained at the same time. Leaving for 2 mins, then 4 mins, 6 etc. Just go in every time, say nothing, lie her back down, walk away. She was in her own room. Took maybe 2 nights. She was never in our bed though and I never let her sleep on me from except when she was really small so that might have contributed.

Never fed during the night ever after 6 months and all self settled within matter of few weeks old after a lot of sleepless nights and feeding every hour or two and putting back into cot. Perseverance and patience

Don't beat yourself up- tomorrow is another day!

Our sleep trainer told us to do all of the soothing etc in DS room. She stayed with me for the first bedtime and I just sat by the cot and sang to him intermittently until he fell asleep by himself (25 mins but felt like a lifetime!) he slept all the way to 5am on the first night. The second night he woke at 3.30 am (time of usual night feed) and I sat and sang on and off for 72 (!) mins. By the third night he slept from 7pm to 6am.

It's a hard thing to do- please don't feel bad. Is your DH supportive?

We’ve just started the process (he’s 8 months, the constant night feeds were killing me). We’re on night 7 and it’s definitely improving. I can finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

I suspect that the long term goal of your sleep consultant will be to transition from rocking, to patting, to shhing and then eventually just putting baby down to sleep.

Are you going cold turkey on feeds? That sounds quite hard going. We have gone from feeding whenever he like to having three set night feeds and using other techniques if he wakes between those times. We’re now gradually cutting the length of the feeds down.

Yes. Sort of. He would prob be happy to leave DS to cry.

We sort of night weaned at the same age, by pushing the feed time back each night and trying to settle her before that. It's really tough but will pay off in the end! She's 18 months now and sleeps brilliantly, unless poorly. You can do this!

You're not a failure. This is hard to do & you'll get split opinions on it

We tried at 9 months & it didn't work. Tried again at 10 months & worked brilliantly. DS has slept through the night since. I'd say it took about 3 days max.

We offered water instead of milk, DH settled most of the time due to me BFing & not wanting him to smell me, we did a bit of controlled crying as it was milk he wanted & was used to getting immediately so holding him & rocking etc would never have worked & finally we had consistent bed time routine (this remains the same)

Your ds is waking for comfort not hunger if he only feeds for 2mins.stop feeding and he will learn to go back to sleep as there is no food.

When he wakes, give him a couple of mins to see if he settles, if not go and cuddle him but don't feed.

You have certainly not failed, we started at 8 months with ds and it was a slow process. You have to do what feels right for you and your family. Only do what you feel comfortable with. We bought an excellent book called 'teach your child to sleep'. Lots of facts and methods but no 'preaching'. When ds got to 12 months he was having two proper naps and 12 hours a night. Considering he was waking every 1-2 hours at 8 months it was fairly miraculous, ds2 and 3 were not quite as consistent but it is harder to do any sleep training when you have other children. Take one day at a time and remember any behaviour is not going to change over night when they have been doing the same for 8 months!

Thank you for all he replies. The consultant has suggested allowing feeds at 2 given times to start with. But the rest of the time I'm supposed to rock him back to sleep then put him back in his cot. But he just wakes up again 15 minutes later. I cant see what that teaches him as he is going to sleep being cuddled! It's a very gentle approach which is what I wanted but I'm just not sure it's the right thing.

If he could just sleep alone for a couple of hours I wouldn't be entertaining training. But I cant see how I can carry on going to bed at 7pm. Nothing is getting done in the house, I never see my husband etc etc.

I feel like I'm damned either way.

I should also say that DS slept in a cot on holiday much better, only coming in to our bed at about 2 or 3am. He has also got himself to sleep being patted many times. So I just dont understand why he wakes up again less than an hour later.

(The other problem is I love co sleeping. I know it isnt sustainable and I miss being able to move and have a glass of wine etc but when he falls asleep with his hand on my face... I love it!)

Don’t make yourself feel guilty about it. Honestly, the first couple of nights made me feel like such a horrible mother. But there are no medals for feeding your baby constantly overnight, depriving yourself of sleep, and making your life difficult. Babies benefit from relaxed, calm, parents who are able to interact with them during the day and if this is the way to achieve that, then you go for it.

Have you spoken to your sleep consultant about how you’ll move on from rocking? My little boy needed to be picked up a fair bit in the first couple of nights but I put him down as soon as he settled, and moved on to patting. Eventually he settled without me picking him up at all. Maybe this is the goal?

Yes the idea is we night wean and then do gradual retreat

I just wanted to answer your point about what he's learning. Nothing, at this point - but that's ok. We also used a sleep consultant and also had to totally drop the night feed before we started. The weaning them off night feeds isn't to make them sleep better at that point (as you say, they're still being rocked, so they're not learning to go to sleep alone), it's to adjust their feeding so they're getting all their calories in the day. At the moment he doesn't theoretically need a night feed, but he does in practice because he's used to it, and so feeding less in the day. It's like if you always had a midnight snack - adults don't need that, but you'd get hungry if you'd always had one and then stopped, so maybe it would make sense to make the snack smaller rather than go cold turkey on it. You want to be really sure he's not hungry when you start the gradual retreat as you want to know that the crying is a 'what the hell is going on, we don't normally do this' cry not a 'I am hungry and need food' cry.

The sleep consultant we used is a big fan of night weaning before sleep training (and therefore waiting until you're sure the baby doesn't need a night feed). I asked if it was such a big deal if we kept one night feed and she pointed out something obvious that hadn't occurred to me - DS can't tell time, or even count. To us 'you can have one bottle, but only after 2am' seems like a clear cut policy, but to a baby it just means they sometimes get fed on waking and sometimes not - they can't think 'ah, it's only 11pm so I won't cry for my bottle now because it's not time'!

You are absolutely right and I have realised this now! We are down to 2 feeds, 10pm and 5am so tonight I'm going to try and push the 10 to 12 and drop the 5. There is no need for him to be feeding overnight.
However as a result of him staying in his own room things are getting easier. The early evening is still a disaster, I'm up and down like a yo yo but last night he only woke once between 10 and 5. Which is better than when he was cosleeping. And we only patted him and he went back to sleep.
So I'm really hoping that there is light at the end of the tunnel and so far we havent had many tears at all.