Partial night weaning - experiences?

[Catlikereactions]

I’m trying to night wean my 11mo gradually so have started to limit feeds to 2x per night and keeping him in his cot rather than co sleep. I’m wondering if anyone has experience of this and it working / reducing night wakes, or if I should just fully night wean.

generally what we have been doing is husband deals with wakes until about 1am and then I do the rest, but as he doesn’t seem to settle (admittedly I could try for longer but at 3am etc it feels extra hard!) I feed him so inevitably for 3am and 5am ish wakes he is fed which feels counter productive as it’s being fed half the night?

also any experience of breastfeeding mums trying to night wean would be appreciated as I’m really struggling to see how he will settle with me without me feeding him. He’s done it once in a week!

Hope you don’t mind… I’m going to follow this as I am currently thinking about starting night weaning my nearly 18 month old and I’m interested in other people’s experiences.
I co sleep too… she’s just started giving me some longer stretches (4-5 hours) but usually it’s every 2-3 hours 🥱 and I’m knackered and pregnant so need to get some much needed sleep!

I sent dh in with a bottle of water. Instead of the 6/7 snacks ds 9 months was demanding.. I was on my knees with lack of sleep.. First night he had an ounce. Second night a few sips. Third night ds slept 7 til 7. Without stirring.. He transformed into a little cherub. He had been a grizzly shattered dc... Same as us!!

No problem! Hope we get some useful replies. Out of interest, when did you get your period back? I really want mine so I can start trying for no.2 but no sign! Recently day feeds have dramatically decreased and I’d hoped that would be enough..

I think I got mine back around 6 months postpartum, I was fully breastfeeding as well so o wasn’t impressed when it turned up 😂 I think everyone is just different, I hope yours shows soon x

Hmm. I wasn't feeding at all during the night by that age. I would do a feed before I put baby down and that was it until morning. I'm trying to get to remember when the middle of the night feed was dropped - must have been before six months. I think I kept the sleepy feed at my bedtime (say 11pm) then left it at that and baby just didn't wake up for that 3am feed. By six months I had dropped the sleepy feed too.
I BF my DD for a year til she naturally weaned herself. But by that time she was eating a variety of solids and was only feeding once before bed. She never had a bottle . I didn't sleep with my kids ever - wonder if that made a difference too? Does your child eat enough regular food?

Lucky! He wakes up every 2 hours for it. He eats very very well, lots of dairy and protein and fats and a big dinner before bed most nights. So it isn’t a hunger thing!

As an update - we’re now trying to extend the wakes my husband deals with to 2am (previously he’d do until midnight), so in theory an extra wake, with the plan to keep pushing this later.

last night - disaster the baby screamed for an hour after the midnight waking until husband gave up and then baby refused to go in cot 3x even with me feeding him back to sleep… we go away for the weekend tomorrow so hoping a change of scenery / break from this resets him and will continue next week!

Hey @Catlikereactions hows it going? We’ve just come back from a few nights away so haven’t tried anything different but tonight we have. DD is in a her own floor bed and DP has rocked her to sleep instead of me feeding to sleep. I’m in a separate room for first part of the night and DP is going to try and handle the first few wakes ups if possible!! We are not into CIO etc. so one of us will respond and if she needs boob I’ll be in there but we have to start somewhere!!
How are you doing? Any luck?

Following too as also in a very similar position, although I don't co sleep (so co sleeping is not the reason for wake ups :) ).

Little update from me… we had a weirdly successful night last night. May have been a complete fluke and we will see what happens tonight but last night was good.
DD managed to sleep from 9:30pm (she had a late nap so was in bed late) up till 1am ish when I gave her some breast milk and she fell back asleep. She didn’t wake up again until 7am and had some more milk and then DP rocked her back to sleep and she woke up just after 9am!!
I am completely shocked as honestly the night before she woke every 2 hours for milk. She can be on my boob all night for comfort (I often have to remove her!) so was not expecting an success yet!
The changes we made that I think helped:

• DD was in her own bed, we use a single mattress on floor next to our king size mattress on floor.
• I breastfed DD before bed but had lights on and then read her a story and sang some songs to calm down before bed. No feeding to sleep. Also offered her some cows milk too (as I’m pregnant I’m really not sure how much milk supply I have left!).
• DP then rocked her to sleep. Luckily DP and DD have good sleep associations already. DD has slept with DP in slings and bed all her life.
• I mostly slept in a different room… I wasn’t planning on sleeping separate all night and fully expected to be back in bed with DD if needed to be but I am pregnant and often sick in the night and full of a cold and coughing a lot so just thought it best to be away most of the night.
• DP slept on mattress next to DD and shushed DD back to sleep if she seemed to be stirring.

Again we may have had a complete fluke of a night and tonight might be hell! Ha ha! But just thought I’d share our tips that worked in case it’s helpful for anyone!! Hope you @Catlikereactions are having some luck and @SpringTime2023 some of this may be helpful for you? Will let you know if tonight is a disaster!! 🤣

Hey! we’ve been away, so limited progress tbh. We go away again this week, so probably going to pause until we are back. Issue is, baby then starts nursery which is probs awful timing to start night weaning? So not entirely sure what to do or when! Trying to drop day feeds though: down to just 1 feed for a nap and 1 feed for bedtime. How is it going for you??

just to add, I get a feeling I need to plough through his protests a bit more. I did try not feeding at a 4am wake up last night but he just gets so angry I give in after 20 mins! I have read it can take them 2 hours to give up and sleep so I do think I have to suck it up, just really struggle with will power at that time of night

Hey, yeah our first night was definately a fluke!! She did ok for the next couple of nights but not as good as the first unfortunately. And last two nights have been really tricky… she just won’t sleep for about 2 hours in the night, she’s rocked and I give her the boob but she just won’t go. In the end we’ve taken her for a walk in her pram just to get her to sleep… which is really not ideal!! I think unfortunately for us my milk supply is reducing rapidly (I’m pregnant) and it’s kind of upsetting us all! We are just going to keep going really and hope it gets better!
Sorry it’s not really improving for you much either… its just so hard isn’t it?

Agh that’s so tough but hopefully just an adjustment phase, which will be short lived! I’m going to restart next week, and stick at it (my will power is not strong!) I’ll keep you posted. Please keep me posted too - and congrats on the pregnancy!

Evening breastmilk has a sleep inducing hormone in so I'd rather breastfeed him again then, then DH deal with the early morning wake ups maybe. Personally I choose not to night wean at this age though as it helps a lot with teething pain etc.

I breastfed both of mine and nightweaned my eldest at 18 months and my youngest at 2 years at I realised from my experience with DD that 18 months was too young. So I definitely wouldn't do it at 11 months, personally.

I think once they are a bit older they can understand better, but yours is still tiny OP, not even a year old yet. I would wait.

Interesting - thank you. Tbh my instinct towards this baby tells me to not do it just yet and to wait a bit longer, but the issue is I want to try for #2 and haven’t got a period back yet. That’s my motivation rather than anything else.

he started nursery this week and definitely needs comfort more so I’m putting it all on pause for now though and going to go to a dr privately to see if there’s anything else stopping period returning, or if there’s anything I can do to get it to return or to just ovulate

That sounds a good idea. For what it's worth, and of course everybody's body is different, my period came back at six months both times even with exclusive breastfeeding so I'm not convinced that breastfeeding is necessarily the issue with periods not returning, it seems to be very different for lots of women and maybe just down to genes? When did your mum's period return do you know?

She didn’t breastfeed so quickly. My sister too. So annoying mine hasn’t - never thought I’d say that!