Milk wakings

[robin441]

Hi. We’ve got ourselves in a hole that we’re struggling to get out of. My 18 month old won’t settle after a night waking without a milk. She started at 9 months and we gave her a milk to go back down and since then it has worked a treat. However we’re 9 months down the line and still in the same position. And we’re getting tired especially now that we have to physically go downstairs to get the milk out the fridge. It does work a charm to get her down straight away but sometimes it can be twice a night and we just want it to stop. So we have tried: swapping for water (cried the house down), moving from a MAM bottle to a sippy cup (wasn’t bothered about the change), rusk with the milk (no change) and reducing the amount of milk (cries initially but then kind of fine with it). I know it’s just for comfort. The way she eats during the day…it can’t be hunger. I know what I need to do which is go cold turkey and try the ‘kind’ cry it out where you visit them to comfort. But I have an older child who does wake when she cries loudly. I was just wondering if there were any other little gems that helped any of you that wasn’t the cold turkey approach.

Hi

I could have written this post about both of my children, my most recent is 14 months old and was waking us up about two hours into the nights sleep to come into my bed and then also wanting milk multiple times per night.

With my son (now 6) we bought a little mini fridge for our bedroom to store milk in (if you don’t want to cut it out) but we never tried ‘sleep training’ him and his father still sleeps with him so that’s a bit of a pain. I didn’t want the same thing to happen with our daughter so I cut out the milk a few weeks ago- I use mam bottles and just started giving less milk throughout the day and offering more water and now I only offer water at night.

I have started camping out by her bed with an air bed, I’ve slept there on and off for the last week and when she wakes I just put my hand on her chest or back and make shhh noises - she settles much easier now. If she’s really upset I’ll get her out to give her some water and she’ll fall asleep in my arms but we never leave her room.

Every bedtime is always in her room, she usually has a bottle of milk before bed which she normally falls asleep drinking - not ideal but she’s not having it at night so that’s something. We’ve had some nights where she’s woken after 4 hours or more - one night last week she managed over 8 hours.

you can do it just do it gradually and how it works for you - we were in a rut as she had allergies and reflux but they’re now under control so thought we’d sort the sleep issues out for once and for all.

sorry it’s so long but thought the info may help (I saw a nursery nurse who specialises in sleep from the nhs last week who gave me the shush / camping out method) xx