11 month old night wakes and night weaning, very sensitive baby

[MamaBear24]

Please help, I don't feel like I can do anything right at the moment. My 11-month-old breastfeeds 4 times a day plus 2-3 times overnight and refuses to take a bottle. He's due to start at nursery in January when I go back to work and so I've been trying to reduce the feeds to make the transition easier for him. A few days ago I tried reducing the daytime feeds to 3 but that's caused him to reverse cycle and wake even more at night (we had got down to three nights in a row where he only woke and fed once at 4 am which was unheard of for him, now we're back to 3-4+ times a night and sometimes very hard to settle even after milk, he was up 8-10pm last night and again 3.30-5.30am plus two wakes to feed in-between). Ideally I wanted to nightwean him before I went back to work too but that just seems impossible now. He's a very sensitive baby and hasn't responded well to sleep training at all when we've tried it previously, he gets very distressed and will cry for over two hours for nights on end. He's also not particularly keen on solids, will take a few bites of food at each meal but nothing more.

I don't know what I'm asking really... will he cope with nursery (of course I know he will in the end)? Will I cope with going back to work on what I'm expecting to be horrendous sleep with the nursery transition? Should I focus on reducing daytime milk feeds or nightime first? Those of you with very sensitive babies, is there anything you did that helped with night weaning or sleep training? Will he ever sleep??? I worked so hard to establish breastfeeding at the beginning (tongue tie, weight loss etc etc) and now I kind of wish we had resorted to bottle/formula feeding to make it easier to wean him off it and for someone else (DH, nursery) to be able to give him milk, it just feels like I'm responsible for every wake, which won't be sustainable when I'm back at work, especially if his sleep gets worse as I'm expecting. The last few nights have been so hard and I haven't been able to settle him, lots of crying and thrashing about in my arms, but gets even worse if put in his cot - possibly teething too but honestly who knows at this point, he's never been a good sleeper. But (usually) self settles at the beginning of the night an absolute dream, just the night wakes he's tricky for, and I didn't expect them to still be so frequent at this age.

Mine has been very similar, she's 14 months now and started nursery at 11 months. I changed nothing before going to nursery, she had never even napped in her cot before going to nursery, only contact nap or in the pram. She will take milk from a sippy or straw cup, she has never taken a bottle. Your baby will adapt! I didn't cut down feeds or night wean, and I still feed as she wants at the weekend. Her sleep has got worse since about 10 months but we have start co-sleeping more which has helped, in a single floor bed. It means I get enough sleep to function. I think I'd get less sleep if we tried to sleep train! Please don't let him cry for 2 hours, before going to nursery you need to be building connection with the baby, not taking it away. Nursery is a massive transition, I didn't want to make any other changes before hand or during the settling in. It sounds like your baby could do with less daytime sleep, if it's taking so long to settle at night? I'd work on introducing a sippy or straw cup, as it's advised to stop bottles anyway at 12 months so no point working on bottles now. Then nursery can offer cows milk in a cup. Mine also eats more at nursery than she does at home. His sleep won't necessarily improve if you night wean, in fact it could get worse. Anyway, this is just my recent experience! And you are doing everything right? It makes me sad you think you're doing anything wrong.

My DC3 is 13 months and started nursery 3/days a week at 11 months. I work 4 days a week but the other day DH has him and I don't usually work the full day out the house that day. The day with DH he will have 1-2 small bottles of formula depending on how long I or they are out for, the rest of the time I breastfeed on demand. The other 3 days a week he is breastfed on demand (unless occasionally if DH takes him for a longer stretch out on a weekend without me if I was ill or had plans or something then he might have 1 bottle of formula with him then too). At nursery I started by sending expressed milk but he flat out refused to drink any of it anyway, rarely he'd maybe have 1oz here or there and that's it. He drinks cows milk in a cup at nursery now which he mostly refuses at home. Hes a terrible sleeper and still breastfeeds 2-3 times a night.

All that is to say I really don't think you need to change anything. Nursery is change enough, personally I would be looking to keep everything else the same for him until he's settled in. And be mindful he's likely to get frequent illnesses as soon as he starts until around April or May time which will likely mean terrible sleep anyway.

Oh I should have added, I've never done every wake if they're waking frequently. You've just described your baby being awake for prolonged periods of time despite breastfeeding anyway so why do you need to the be one to stay up with them for hours? Especially once you're back at work. DH and I share the night wakes, we both work 4 days a week.

You write “feels like I’m responsible” are you responsible or not? It’s not necessarily your problem to solve. Firstly it can be normal for babies to still wake up at that age. Second, the problem is your lack of sleep not the baby waking up. If you are going back to work and your husband is going to work then you are on an even footing and you both need to be coming up with ideas and settling the baby etc.

Also, if you think it’s teething and they are writhing around have you been giving calpol? My eldest wouldn’t cry when teething but he would sure seem uncomfortable, writhing, squirming, shouting, putting things in his mouth. I would “save” - calpol does for the night so we could all be a bit better rested.

Its hard and you seem to think you aren’t doing well but you sound like you are doing great.