Ferber method

[Pippinsqueak]

So I am gearing myself up to use the Ferber method but a quick question, my 17 month old is in the process of night weaning. Should I wait until she's fully night weaned or use the Ferber as a time to cut it out completely?

My son has always been a terrible sleeper and I have had some extremely dark and desperate moments but we have turned a corner during lockdown (realising as I write this I jynx it)

Every child is different but my son had to be weaned off the breast and on to a bottle and then onto watered down milk to nothing. There was no way he would have grown out of it - he had to be forced out of it.

Ferber was genuinely traumatic for all involved as he was genuinely hungry at night. If you night weaning you may even find you don’t need to do Ferber in time

Good luck!

Hi thanks for your reply, unfortunately my daughter never took to a bottle and at 17 months I think it's a bit late to start.

When I'm being rational I know she ll sleep when she ready to sleep, but when I have a run of seriously bad nights (she always has bad nights) I get all upset and start thinking I need to do something drastic

Make sure she isn't teething or in a developmental leap, then I would start night weaning first. Help her and support her through that transition (or get your husband to- my DD wouldn't settle for me without boob, my DS still won't). If the wakings are at the same time every night it is probably habitual and once you night wean sleep should improve a bit in its own. How does she fall asleep?

She's coming up the to the 18 months regression (but she has to be good first to regress lol) she always got teeth coming through but never shows it (ie red cheeks, chewing/dribbling)

She falls asleep with either my husband or I rocking her in a chair. She hasn't been boobed to sleep since 13 months old.

It's not the same time she wakes, it's usually between 45 mins and 2 hours but never more than 2 hours after being put down

My husband works nights and has cfs so night wakings are usually all down on me. He may take the first waking when he's home but he suffers with cluster migraines if he's woken too many times a night

You cannot do the ferber / controlled crying methods unless baby is night weaned.

You could use Ferber as a way to night wean and solve settling issues all at the same time. It will be brutal though and you'll need some nerves of steel to not feed when your hormones and instincts may well be telling you that you must. So might be easier if your DH is willing to do the first week of night wake ups? Or at least their first 3 nights when it's worse.