If you are trying to cut down / stop nightfeeding, is it all or nothing?

[annatee]

Hi there, am totally desperate to cut down on nightfeeding after a week of hourly munching! I'm breastfeeding, and my 7-month-old seems to have suddenly realised she can have milk on tap, is demanding it constantly and is very hard to settle throughout the night, with or without it!

So if I get my DP to help me settle the babe - and realise we'll have a struggle on our hands - in your experience should I refuse to feed her whenever she wakes up?

At the moment she goes down ok awake at 7 but is a light sleeper, calls for us a few times in the evening but is easy to shush back to sleep, until 9.30 - 10, when she won't be settled without milk, so have got in the habit of feeding her. After that she usually comes into our bed as is impossible to settle in her cot, where she has been feeding anything from 3 -5 more times throughout the night. I am really struggling now in the daytime and sleep deprivation is seriously taking its toll - keep bursting into tears at the slighest provocation...

So should I steel myself for an all-night embargo or just start off with that 10pm feed? Would really appreciate any wise words!!

I've just managed to cut the night feeds, but my DS (6mo) ws only waking twice for feeding.

First I cut the 3am feed. So he went from 12am to 6am without feeding. He woke hourly from 3 till I fed him. After a week though, he was only waking a couple of times between 12 and 6 and was resettling quickly.

The following week I cut the 12am feed. I first fed him at 10:30pm, the next night at 9:30pm. Then the third night put him to bed as late as possible, so he'd finished feeding about 8pm.

That was a tough week. He would wake once for an hour to two hours, trying really hard to get himself back to sleep. DH helped a lot with resettling. We had EBM on standby in the freezer in case DS was inconsolable. I felt that it would be less of a step back if he was being bottle fed EBM, less of an association with BFing. In the end we didn't need it.

We're into our third week now and tonight is the second night in his own room. He slept through last night and we've got our fingers crossed that he'll sleep through again tonight.

Oh boy, sounds tough!
Although I havent had it as bad as that, my DD is 6 months and I have just got her down to one night feed from 3 in the past week and hope to stop completely over next few weeks (wishful thinking maybe).
What I did was pick a time that she usually wakes as a feed time and stick to it. My DD wanted feeding about every 3 hours but I picked between 2-3 as an acceptable feeding time and any time she wakes before then I stick to my guns and settle her with out a feed. She still wakes at about 12 and 5 though. She settles herself now at 5 but I need to settle her at 12. I have resorted to a dummy which I may regret but is is getting easier to settel her each time so Im hoping things will continue to improve.
Im not sure if this will help but all I can say is that for your own sanity I would try something now as it will get harder as she gets older.
I stopped breastfeeding about 3 weeks ago hoping that switching to formula would help- it didnt.....
On a completely different note, she is 7 months now so you could try controlled crying. I couldnt do it myself as I am too soft but it worked brilliantly for my friend who had similar problems to you.
good luck, you are not alone...

Hello annatee. Have been in the same boat and agree with nicnic01, do try and tackle it now. My DS is 10 months now. By 6 months he was down to 2 night feeds, then has crept up to whenever he wakes up as he just couldn't self settle.

I too couldn't take the hourly feeds so reluctantly followed HV advice and have been doing a sort of mix between controlled crying and gradual retreat. Have always been against the idea but was just desperate.

HV assured me it would take 3 nights and he'd be sleeping through. SHE LIED! But am now on night 8 and he has improved and stays in his cot all night with no feeds. We have a really rocky time between 2 and 4am and it's very off and on after that but it is such a joy to see him snuggle down, fidget and get comfy then go off to sleep. He has always been a really light sleeper too but it seems if he has gone off completely on his own, it seems to be a deeper sleep.

So when he wakes, I wait 5 mins then go in, lay him down and say the same phrase each time. Then go and sit in a chair with my back to him. If he hasn't settled then I go back after 7 mins and repeat, then 9 min etc. The once he's asleep I wait 5 mins and then go back to my bed and snuggle down, fidget and get comfy and usually NOT get off to sleep!!! But at least I can turn over etc without the fear that I'm going to wake him up .

The first 3 nights he woke up 10 times a night but since then has been 3 or 4 but that middle one takes ages for him to go off again. Some lucky people reckon it only took one night of controlled crying and that was it. Not with my stubborn LO though! Will keep persevering though.

Good luck.

Thanks very much for your messages, very helpful. Previously she was having 3 hourly feeds which was bad enough as took so long to settle, but for a week now it has been every hour, eek! Last night was fairly terrible so am even more determined that it needs to stop.

Problem is I wonder if she is feeling ill or teething etc? Because if she is not 100% maybe she needs the comfort, in which case I will feel awful and guilty suddenly whipping it away. We have been poorly with a tummy bug and I was wondering if she is also feeling it, despite not showing any signs....

You can see how good I am going to be at any kind of sleep training! Will of steel...

One last question - do you think I need to tackle the feeding thing at the same time as the in-our-bed thing? I had thought she was waking more often because I was lying there next to her. But it does help her settle better if she is sleeping next to us. I don't want to send mixed messages and want to make a definite plan but my brain is so addled by the interrupted sleep!!

I have the same worries re: teeth and illness every night!I find the not knowing the hardest thing about being a mum.

I found it impossible to settle DS in bed with me without feeding, so I had to tackle both at once. I really don't think he was hungry anyway, it was just the only way he seemed to be able to get comfy and go back to sleep. I do think I was disturbing him by being next to him though, despite sleeping like a statue!

I was thinking this morning about my message to you last night. I have read that controlled crying is more effective as the babies age increases. Health Visitors do recommend it from 6 months, but I do wonder if it should be older. One book I've read (out of 5 on baby sleep....) quotes figures of 93% effective at 1 year old but MAY be effective at a younger age.

I have also tried the No Cry Sleep Solutions approaches. That did cut out night feeds, but he then woke every hour. Was doing it for a couple of months and then he got a nasty cold which set everything back because I went back to feeding him (feeling sorry for him with the snuffles, I too am useless!). Then (not so D)H left us and everything went to pot. Anyway, different story.

So NCSS might be another idea for you but definitely isn't a quick method.

Will be thinking of you when I am up wondering about teeth/cold/etc at 2am!

Wow sounds pretty rough your end too. I am also an obsessive reader of baby sleep books, have read the NCSS one but at that point I was thinking, 'hmm, she's not quite THAT bad'... little did I know!

What gets me is how well she can sleep in the day! She is napping now, not much problem getting her in cot, awake then self-settling. So I know she can do it! But keeping her in cot at night seems like an impossibility. In fact, moving my arm from under her at night seems almost impossible at present! It's a mystery to me.

Am holding out hope that something will change to make her sleep more heavily at night so she doesn't wake with the slightest movement, noise etc. Only fed her twice last night, but was still waking almost every hour, hmmm...

Hope you're having more success!

Hi annatee, I've just started trying to cut out night feeds with my DD (just turned 1). She's never slept through the night without feeding, but I wanted to wait until now to be definite that it wasn't a hunger thing (also because I've kept putting it off! ).

We tried it first last night and I wrote down how it went on this post.

Great effort RB sounds like it went well considering it was the first night. Sadly my babe doesn't seem to be able to go even an hour at the moment without feeding, so definitely time to try and cut down or hopefully stop completely... When we put her to bed she goes off to sleep quite well but is usually crying again within 90 mins, so the whole battle starts nightly around 8pm (sigh). Here's hoping that cutting down on feeding might send a message about night time being for sleeping!

Keep up the good work!

Thanks

One thing I remember from when mine were small babies is that everything is a phase, normally only lasting a couple of weeks or so. So if this isn't your baby's normal behaviour (i.e. she was going 3 hours before this - not brilliant, but all my DD ever managed!) then it could very well be teething or whatever, and she'll change again in a few days.

That's not very helpful, probably! Good luck

Good work robberbutton (and congratulations although you probably didn't feel like it on the bathroom floor last night!).

Annatee - DD sounds so similar to my DS about only settling with feeding. Like I said, I really don't think he is actually hungry though.

Hope tonight is a good one for us all....