Sarah Ockwell-Smith delay by 5 min, then 10 min etc night weaning

[BertieBotts]

Has anyone done this? Essentially she reckons you can night wean by delaying nursing for 5 min the first night, 10 min the second night etc until you get to 30 mins.

More importantly has anyone done this with a toddler who definitely doesn't go to sleep any other way?! I keep reading it and thinking right that sounds good, but then when it gets to the moment of implementing the delay I'm like WTF? This is never going to work and so I just give up before I've even tried

Should I just try it?! She reckons it takes 7-10 days to have an effect.

I read lots and lots of different things before trying night weaning after DS was 18 mo. But he had stopped feeding to sleep at bedtime by 12 mo, only every other bloody wake up all bloody night long.

And I didn't want to have to think about how long to stay awake before I could pop a boob in his face and go back to sleep!

We did a lot of prep work in terms of reading 'Loving comfort: A toddler weaning story'. Daily. For months. Talking about it.

A countdown from 10 to delatch, either himself or I would, gradually sooner and as he was less sleepy.

Kept cosleeping, and cuddling.

Gradually tried offering cuddling first etc. Sometimes accepted. When that was mostly working, we went for it. He didn't ask for milk after the third night.

YY exactly I do not want to have to be timing myself as to how long until I'm allowed to feed him, aaargh.

However have been trying the cuddle-first method and countdowns for ages with no luck :( I think I need something a bit more structured.

I cant see how that would have worked with mine. I just explained to mine that there was no more mummy milk in the night but if she woke up daddy would be there with cuddles and water. or if you are co sleeping the dr jay Gordon method.

How old is your little one @BertieBotts ?

Sending daddy in for ours just caused hell @3WildOnes and to me, Jay Gordon still seemed quite harsh.

We got to the no more mummy milk chat eventually just did a lot of groundwork first.

@Harrysmummy246 I do understand that some find it harsh. I am of the opinion that an older baby or toddler being comforted in the night but not being given what they want (to nurse) is actually quite a good way for them to learn to manage their feeling of frustration/anger/dissapointment/loss/upset. It is the beginning of setting limits with love. Children need to feel these emotions and be helped through them by a loving parent. I know that this goes beyond what Bertie asked but I think this is what Sarah Ockwell Smith misses from lots of her writing on babies and children.

That's interesting because she writes about it quite a lot in the Second Baby Book which is what I was reading. I have also been reading Janet Lansbury who talks about this a lot.

If DH goes in he jsut gets worked up until he's completely awake and then doesn't go back to sleep so that is no good.

He is 2.5 and I'm pregnant again so really need to stop feeding all night. It's just got worse since I've got pregnant as well, I don't know if he can already taste the change in the milk.

Jay Gordon won't work as ideally I am wanting an intervention/method I can use in his own room, before I move him to our bed. I don't really want him in the bed with the newborn and would like to make the change in advance so he doesn't feel pushed out.

Did 5 min last night which went OK. He did cry but not as bad as I thought it would be and he was clearly getting some comfort from a cuddle. However then I confused myself because his next wake up was at 4am and I'd been following a different method the last few nights of trying to keep him in his room until 4am but bringing him through when he woke up if it was after 3/4. (As have also read in a different book to treat 4am as "early morning" aka all bets are off just do whatever, asap to get them back to sleep, or accept getting up!) - mixing methods is obviously not going to be helpful to anyone, but that's where my half asleep thought process went.

We are moving DS1 into DS2's current room and DS2 into a bigger room he will eventually share, so my next plan if this doesn't work is to put DS2 in a single bed and climb in with him, as lying next to him is currently the only way he settles without milk, so I'm hoping I can transfer this to him staying in his bed but with a cuddle and then transition to me being next to the bed and then further away.

But I'm going to give the delay tactic at least 2 weeks before changing anything.

Interesting, Janet Lansbury is pro cry it out. Or at least she has a guest blogger on her website who supports cry it out.

Yes, I have seen that cause a lot of controversy! I don't think I would do cry it out (I don't think it would work at this age anyway, and I'm a bit morally uncertain about doing it at an age where they can't physically leave, or differentiate between disgruntlement and fear) but I do think her insistence that we should embrace kids' difficult feelings and not be afraid of them is very important, and def what is missing from a lot of gentle parenting stuff, especially as I recognise myself in her description of the parent who is drawn to gentle parenting because I am a bit conflict avoidant and a people pleaser.

And I find Janet's stuff in general to have the respect I liked from Gentle Parenting but with less wishy-washyness, which tends to make me be nice nice nice nice SCREAMING HARPY because I've gone so far over the line of what I can cope with

I think our oldest boys are around the same age as I remember you from when I first joined mumsnet. I am the same as you a bit of a people pleaser and conflict avoidant too. I would reccomend the book 'saying no' by Asher Phillips. She is also pro cry it out (which I am not) but I did feel like it was a useful book for someone like me who probably sways towards being too permissive. She is a child psychotherapist.

Aaah yes possibly :D I used to be quite active on the old AP/gentle parenting threads!

Hi @BertieBotts sorry I know it’s been years now but just found this post as I’m considering trying Sarah Ockwell-Smith’s delay method for night weaning. Just wondered if you carried on with it in the end and how it went? Feeling very sceptical!

Just looked at the date on this so it would have been DS2 - no, sorry it didn't work IIRC I developed quite bad nursing aversion later on in the pregnancy so basically couldn't stand to feed him for more than a couple of seconds at a time and kept cutting him off early and that essentially caused him to wean entirely, which meant that he would then accept DH if he went in at night. But actually his sleep has just always been the most disrupted of all the DC. He even woke up tonight upset because he needed a poo. I am not sure that any method would have helped much because he is just sensitive and has an extremely overactive mind.

I did get one helpful thing from it. I found that it gave me a bit of confidence that I didn't necessarily need to rush straight to fixing the issue in the exact way he wanted. I could go in a bit more slowly, be moving towards him but not feel the rush/panic/like it was something so urgent that I really needed to fix. Basically the "being OK" with their feelings as somebody else mentioned earlier in the thread. I feel like this was a big shift for me.

Ultimately I found the best approach was what I did with DS3 - co-sleep without even trying to change this until I was ready to fully commit to making a change, and then set myself up for success and have clear boundaries for myself about what I would do and a "get out clause" that I could actually stick to. When I just tried to wait and see how it went, nothing changed and I ended up exhausted and then I couldn't stick to the plan (like my 4am thing).

So for DS3 I decided my aim was to keep him in his own room rather than bringing him through to our bed but I still nursed if he wanted it. I had learnt from DS2 I could go in slowly and sort of be moving towards feeding but rock a bit first, and I had learnt about cutting off early so I did that a bit and sometimes he'd then go back to sleep in my arms without feeding. So I did that but my get out clause was - if I have 3 failed putdowns, if he wakes again less than 30 mins after the previous one, if it gets to 1am or later, I can bring him back to our bed. I found fairly frequently, it was just when I was getting to the point of feeling like this was a failure, it was pointless, it was never going to work etc, and I'd look at my phone and say OK I will stay 20 more minutes, or it would be 00:45 or something and once I'd registered that no it would not last forever and I would be able to escape, he'd almost immediately fall asleep. I don't know if it was that I relaxed, or that I would get to that feeling when it had been a long time but it was an interesting thing to learn about myself.

Also because I was determined to settle in for the long haul of sticking to my goal I downloaded a load of old favourite books like I think I reread most of Harry Potter during this period and then a load of Jacqueline Wilson, so I had a more immediate incentive to stay there trying as well.

Once he figured out that I wasn't going to take him back to our bed if he asked me enough times, he started to settle in to the routine of being settled back to sleep in his own room and then after a few more weeks of that he just stopped waking up. Completely surprised me. I think it took about 3 months in the end and he was much younger than it had happened with the other two, about 14-17mo I think?

Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to share all of that, it’s incredibly helpful. See what you mean about the delay approach helping to shift mindset and making you try alternative soothing methods. My DS is 15 months and up to this point has mostly been in his cot but night wakes have got so frequent/long lately I’m deciding whether to embrace co sleeping or try night weaning to see if that helps. Ideally I’d like to keep him in his own room but fear he’s also the sensitive type who will probably keep waking a lot regardless. Either way I’ll definitely try something like you suggest where I’ve got a clear plan to stick to. The downloading books is a great idea too! Thanks very much again.