weaning off night feeds

[moljam]

my ds is 20 months and goes to sleep with bottle,then up all night-average 6 times,good night is twice- for more milk.i know i need to take bottle away but any tips?

Our ds was doing this so we have been giving him water.

He averages now on waking just once maybe twice a week and if we're lucky its just before we go to bed.

Bump.

Any ffeeders who can help her?

callmeovercautious thanks im getting desperate now,he downed 4 8 oz bottles last night but shouldnt be hungry as he ate lots in day
nbg,i'll try that

It has to be habit, doesnt it? He can't need those feeds. Can you do pu/pd or even cc to get past this?
I am in a similar position weaning ds's night feeds. Its hard to know what to do. I seem to have advice for others, but not for myself!

i think hes too old for pu/pd as hed get too over stimulated.i suppose the pd bit without pu might work?i might try that and use cc as last resort-i dont know!why cant i have baby that sleeps!!!!!?

My 11m DS is just the same (I know there's a big difference in age but I also know that it is just a habit, not real hunger).

Last night I made up the bottles 50:50 water and milk. Tonight it will be 25:75 and tomorrow 100% water. I am hoping, nay praying, that this will help.

If it makes you feel any better I was up 3 times last night

I have seen others on here recommend replacing water in the bottles at night. I think it is done gradually.

I have used CC for bedtime but not for night wakings and it did work very quickly but she was 6m and could not stand up in the cot etc.

Has he got a favourite teddy, sometimes they just wake up and can't find them so cry?

I think Kiskidee has a lo a similar age that had problems sleeping, perhaps she will come along and find you soon with more age appropriate help.

we did the water instead of milk thing too. babe now sleeps frm 10.30 to about 5/6am

yes he has favorite cuddly,which he holds all night!

My dd is 15 months and i've just stopped feeding her in night. At 10 months she was still having 3 feeds in night so I implemented a new rule (for me more than her!), if she woke before 12 (having had last feed at 7ish) I would try to get her back to sleep by anything other than feeding her (so patting her, shushing her, cuddling her, rocking her, putting music on for her, laying down in my bed with her etc). If it really failed then i would feed her but more often than not i didn't have to (It didn't happen instantly but if she wasn't hungry then she soon started to sleep without the bottle). If she woke after 12 i would automatically feed her, my reasoning being that this was half way through night so a reasonable time to be hungry. When she woke again between that feed and 6am I would know that she wasn't hungry and so would settle her in other ways. This was the hardest one to overcome as all i wanted to do was get back to sleep in the quickest time possible and that would have been to give her a bottle. The feeds cut down to 2, and then to just one in quite a short time (a couple of weeks). She then started to walk at 11 months and needed 2 feeds again most night but this didnt last long.
Since then i have tried several times to either cut down the oz or to dilute the milk (so same amount of water but less scoops of formula) but she would then wake again an hour or 2 later wanting the rest. However the week before last i tried diluting the milk again and it worked, I got down to 6oz water and 3 oz powder without it affecting her sleep. i took this to mean that she didn't really need the milk anymore so then decided to just give her water to see what happened. The next night when i was putting her to bed i told her that i wasn't going to give her milk in the night when she woke but would cuddle her and help her to settle if she needed me to. I'm not sure if she fully understood but I didn't want to spring it on her as a nasty surprise in the middle of the night! So when she woke i took her out of her cot and offered her water (in a beaker rather than a bottle), she had a little bit but then pushed it away and snuggled into me. when she started geting sleepy i put her bck in her cot and she went back to sleep. It worked far far better than i was expecting it to. Since then (has now been a week of no milk)we've had a couple of good nights and a few bad, but she is also teething so this could be affecting it but have managed to get away without giving her milk, and although she has been restless, often for a couple of hours, she has eventually settled herself back to sleep without milk. When she wakes i leave her a few minutes to see if she will self settle and if not go in, cuddle her etc to help her. She usually settles almost instantly but then wakes again not long after, it is tough not giving her the milk cos i know that if i do we can just go straight back to sleep but hopefully her sleeping will improve and it will be worth it in the long run. Sorry this is so long but I thought a blow by blow account might be of more use to you than a simple give him water instead-which makes it sound far easier than it really is and may dishearten you if it doesnt work straight away for your ds. I think it will be a gradual thing, maybe try setting yourself time limits as i did and take away one bottle at a time. The watering down thing was more successful for us in the end than just reducing the oz as it weaned her off the milk gradually and let me see i wasnt starving her by stopping the milk when i eventually did. if you use cows at night maybe go back to formula for the weaning off period, or just dilute the cows milk. Good luck! ps if you go to the "going to stop bfing at night thread" you'll be able to keep up with mine and 2 other mums progress (i ff rather than bf but still use that thread as we are doing it at the same time)

Thanks for that Claireybee. It sounds like you managed to do it really gently.

thanks claireybee!wow!given me lots to think about
just spoke to hv who says hes using bottle as dummy so take it away completly and do cc.

Yeah i had people telling me to do cc from when she was 6 months old but i couldn't do it! It just felt wrong to me, although i do know it works for some people. The gradual approach worked better for me because i wasn't suddenly stopping something she was used to having which i thought might be distressing to her. Also until now i really did think she was still hungry at night. It has taken a while to wean her off the night feeds but i'm glad i've done it this way cos it hasnt upset her (or me!) at all

We weaned DS1 off night wakings for bottles when he was around 4 months and weaning (advice at the time).

He was having 2x 8oz bottles a night. We reduced the amount of powder by 1 scoop ever other day as others have said. So 8oz water with 7 scoops, then 2 nights later 8oz water with 6 scoops and on. By the time he was down to 4 scoops he gave up and slept through the night He drunk more milk during the day as he had really cut down on this and was taking it all during the night! Hope this helps.

as an overall background into my thinking of these things which i think most people know anyway, is that

1. you will not change his behaviour in 3 nights (maybe) unless you do CC in any of its many forms. (It is fairly common knowledge round these parts that i do not agree with.)

2. any other method including CC is hard on the parents but some methods are gentler on the babies and i am all for that if the parents are not co-sleeping. I also know that some people find that for many other reasons, they can't co-sleep.

3. Me, i am lazy and like claireybee said, the graveyard shift in doing these things are the hardest.

The next 2 things are mostly my musings but i am sure others must think the same.

4. you know your baby better than anyone else so don't be afraid to tweak someone else's idea to better suit you and your baby. In fact, i recommend it. As when your method works, it empowers you.

5. So, if it ain't working as you have hoped have a think of which bit you think has gone not quite right and tweak it. Also, babies don't learn in a linear fashion (and neither do we but we think we do.) so if you think he's regressed, then take the steps back with him and move forward another time.

Now off to find a thread from wiggle jiggle where she more or less did it for herself. I don't know if wiggles is still around under another name but i haven't seen her around lately.

here is wigglejiggle's thread

make sure you read the links linked to that one too. The article by dr Jay Gordon is excellent. it is about weaning off night feeds for cosleepers.

My thinking is that if if can work for co-sleepers, you can tweak it to make it work for non-cosleepers too and do it without tears, as wiggles showed. I think she was a star to make it work.

As i said pool the knowledge, reflect and devise your own thing. That is the bit where i think the empowerment comes in.

HTH.

just looked at the link on the link below, the dr Jay Gordon article is relevant, the other three at the end of the thread are not relevant so don't start to read them and think "eh, what is that bint on about?"

I said you would be handy! Hope you are having a better night than me

what is the matter overcautious?

Aghh! I knew I should not give advice to others - my DD always goes and wakes up loads just to prove my theories wrong! She woke up every 45 minutes until about midnight! She has nappy rash because I got stuck and had to use wipes once last week! Blardy wipes!

wow i'd wish i'd seen that before i started kiskidee-it backs up a lot of my own thoughts. I'm a huge fan of doing things without stress or tears, especially when babies are involved.

thanks kiskidee-very interesting and wigglejiggles thread gave me hope!how can i adapt it though to bottle fed baby?as she was lifting lo out of cot for bf?im thinking if i did as others suggested and gradually watered down milk that may help?say one week 6oz milk 2oz water,next week 4oz milk 4oz water,next week 2oz milk 6oz water,next week just 8oz water and see how i go from there??????
not looking forward to seing hv,i thought she may have advice but feel her advice will only be cc,which im not completly againgst but would like to hear other ideas too.

claireybee ,did your dd mind having the milk watered down?did she notice?the night you did no milk and told her,what was her reaction when she woke?

i would go with either watering down the milk or reducing the oz, full strength by an oz or half an oz at a time.

what i woudl try at first is to be there when you expect him to wake up and try to soothe him with your voice first but don't let him wake up too much by crying. you can even pick him up and soothe him. just give the milk before he is too upset. if he wakes up too much it will be harder for him to go back to sleep.

my tack would be to try to eliminate just one feed at first. it gives you an idea of what may work and what may not so you can adjust it for a more long term one.. using Dr Jay Gordon's framework, pick one between 11 or 12 pm and 5 am.

this will also give you at least one longer stretch of sleep if it works. try that for a week maybe?

I have tried alternately watering down the milk and reducing the amount several times over the past 6 months or so and neither were successful so I always gave up and tried again a bit later. I didn't want to force it.

With reducing the amount she would cry wanting more as soon as the bottle was finished, with watering it down she was ok by just an oz but as soon as i watered it down by any more than that she would go to bed ok but then wake an hour or two later wanting more milk.

I kept trying though because I was confident that one day she would be ready. In the end i decided the watering down option would be more successful for us, based on the fact that she would at least go back to bed after drinking that, rather than crying wanting more as soon as she had drunk it.

This time, for whatever reason, i was able to water down the milk to just 3 scoops in 6oz water and from there to stop completely. I decided not to give her a bottle of just water as she tends to drain a bottle and i didn't think this would help break the habit (having established through reducing the milk that it wasn't hunger waking her) so offered her water in case she was thirsty, but in a beaker instead of bottle.

The night I first didn't give her any milk she woke as usual, i went in to her, picked her up, sat down with her and gave her the water. She drank some of it, but then pushed it away and popped her dummy back in. She did sit up and look for the bottle but when she saw it wasn't there was fine and snuggled in to me-maybe she had understood when i told her she wouldn't be having milk cos she did seem far more accepting than i was expecting! I then just cuddled her for a while and put her back in bed and she was fine although she did wake up earlier than usual. Once i'd changed her nappy and given her morning milk though she was happy to stay in her cot for another hour.

She is teething at the moment so that is making her more restless than usual, but even so she hasn't demanded milk, and hasn't really been any worse than when she has been teething before.

It's still fairly new but we do seem to be being successful, at least as far as cutting out the night feed is concerned. She is still waking, and i am still having to go in to her at least once (usually 3 times)a night but hopefully she'll cut down the waking soon too.

It does seem to be taking her a little longer to settle than when i was giving her milk (which was drink bottle, back into cot, straight to sleep), and she often seems to be dozing off then waking an hour or so later so it is taking her a while to get used to not having that tummy full of milk in order to sleep but i am now confident (which i havent been until now) that she isn't actually hungry, just that the full tummy helped her sleep. i hope that makes sense, i don't seem able to explain it! Anyway, one of the reasons i am confident that she isnt hungry is that she doesn't seem desperate for her milk when she wakes in the morning, which i think she would be if she had been hungry since 2 or 3 am.