My 16 month old has been mostly night weaned for months now except for one feed when he wakes at 5. He has always gone straight to sleep after this feed until 7 or sometimes half 7. We decided to try to drop this last feed. He still has breastmilk in the day but often only morning, bedtime and one or sometimes two other times during the day depending on how busy a day we have - he is less likely to look for it if he's busy and distracted. I'd like to carry on this way and let him wean naturally. Maybe I'm on to plums with this idea!
For the past 3 days my husband has gone in when he wakes to settle him with a cuddle. It's been a nightmare. He's now waking earlier (4am) and is crying a lot. My husband will manage to calm him and he goes to sleep for maybe half an hour then wakes again and this goes on until 6 when I cave and he has a feed and is up for the day.
I hate this. He used to just go back to sleep. I feel like we're now stuck in a battle. He seems genuinely hungry and we've landed ourselves with a 6am wale up instead of 7 like we used to have. My husband maintains he can't breastfeed forever and I agree that recently I've been on the verge of wanting to wean him altogether.
What do we do? Even giving him a sippy cup of milk isn't working (and I don't want to get into leaving one in his cot as it's not good for his teeth) even if it did work we're replacing one wake up for another when we go in to hand him the cup 🤦🏼♀️
He's currently crying while my husband is in with him so that'll be me going in again in ten minutes. He's been going since 4am as usual and tonight even started waking up at other times through the night that he didn't used to.
Husband thinks we have to stick it out another few days because going back now would confuse him andI Agee that at some point he does have to stop breastfeeding. Surely we won't have a 4-6 fight forever because of that !
Has anyone been through similar?