Am I being unrealistic to expect dc3 to phase out night feeds on her own?

[MooM00]

DC3 has taken ages to get into eating properly but now at 10m eats 2 reasonable meals a day and toys with a little breakfast. She still wakes to bf 2x in the night. My first 2 dc gradually stopped night feeds by just waking later and later, but dc3 doesn't seem to be doing this (and the first 2 ate a lot more). Last night she went to bed at 7, woke at 1am and I fed her, she slept til 4ish and I spent 15mins rocking her back to sleep(she was screaming and sitting up at first), then she woke again 45 mins later so I fed her and she slept til 7am. She is always put in her cot awake after a feed and always settles herself, only needs rocking if she hasn't just been fed.

SO, does she need the 4am feed at all and if she does will she give it up of her own accord or has it become a habit? And does she even need the 1am one?

i did night feeds with ds1 til he was about 15mo (urrgh) but ds2 is only 9 weeks old and I´m taking a slightly different tack. last night i fed him at 8pm then 3am but when he woke at 5am (would normally feed) I just gave him his dummy and shushed him and to my amazement he settled perfectly happily. A few nights earlier I did the same for the midnight feed and the same happened. Might be flukes but needless to say I am a bit that I may have feed ds1 through the night for faaaaaaar longer than necessary!!

So the upshot is, I would say, that if your 10mo is feeding well through the day and eating food I really doubt she needs to feed through the night, but who knows, every child is so different and I obv fed ds1 that long because i felt he needed it. Think you are going to have to try and cut it out and see what happens and go with your gut feeling. isn´t that just the answer to EVERYTHING re. parenting?!

So roundthehouses did your ds1 stop the feeds on his own?

No, dh had to go in and sit with him when he woke and do a kind of shush-pat and eventually gradual withdrawal over a period of time while I hid my head under a pillow. Anxious to avoid that again!!

We have got DS down from three to one night feed, at first by sending in DH for a shush-pat while I put earplugs in (and cried. Am big softy) and then eventually by both of us lying still in bed, almost holding our breaths, while he went "arghwaaaAAAAAAAAaahhaaaa->asleep." The first approach tired us all out and DS cried and cried and cried while DH rocked him like a maniac. The second approach felt absolutely awful but took only one night of proper crying (for us all) and then two more of 30 seconds of shouting twice a night, followed by him going straight back to sleep. Now he sleeps from 7pm till around 3am, when I feed him, and then he gets up between 5-6. I don't mind that too much cos that's when DH gets up for work anyway, so we all get up together. I'm hoping to change it before the winter rolls around and it's dark and miserable outside, though!

I still go in and feed him if he wakes between 2-4ish, cos that's the one when he never goes back to sleep, and I suspect at that point he's genuinely hungry. He's 9 months old.

oh, incidentally my pediatrician said at his 7 month appointment (live in USA) that he ought to be sleeping through the night and didn't need a night feed. I took that as encouragement to start scaling them down. It's apparent to me he still does need the 3am one, but occasionally he sleeps through it, and so one day I hope to phase that out too. Certainly him waking 3 to 4 times a night was a habit, not a need. He was only feeding to get back to sleep. Wheras at 3am now he has a long feed before falling to sleep.

So maybe I should try and cut out the 1am feed? She's still in our room which doesn't help.

Honestly, I have no clue how to go about it! Not that helpful - sorry. All I know was the when DS woke in the night and cried for boob he wasn't crying for ME, he was crying cos he wanted to be back asleep and I had become part of the pattern for how he got back to sleep. So we had to change up the pattern, and that involved a night or two of crying.

Don't think I could have done it if he'd been in our room, it was all I could bear to be through 2 closed doors with my pillow over my head. Is it time to move DC3 out? Do you have a place to move her to?

Dc3 potentially has her own room. We have just put dc1 and 2 in together and are giving it a week to settle down before we move the lo. Things may change when she moves anyway.

yes - I think there was a bit of time where ds was waking cos i was there and smelled so yummy. Then he got into the habit of it, if you see what I mean. So we had to replace ME with something else (him on his own, with his bunny). . . it's hard to do but oh WOW I feel like a whole new woman now I'm getting 6+ hours straight sleep every night!

blackcurrants dc3 definitely knows where I am, last night I woke at 1am to the sound of her sitting at the end of her cot and 'ahem ing' in my direction. I fed her and she then slept til 7am so she is improving a bit. Shame that my 6 hours sleep was then interrupted by dc1 crying because dc2 was snoring.......
So does your dc sleep cudling the bunny? And does he lose it and wake you up to find it for him? I was planning to wait a bit before dc3 gets her lion all night.

this is really helpful - am still feeding my nearly 10 month old twice a night. i know he doesn't need it any more, but if i don't feed him he wakes up properly and then takes 2 hours to go back down. he is still in our room which doesn't help. normally he wakes when we go to bed at 11ish and i feed him then, then again at 3ish. last night he didn't wake up till 1am, so fed him then. he woke again at 3ish and i managed to settle him without feeding, but ended up feeding him at 4.30. hoped he would then sleep till 7, but no, he woke at 5.30 and would only go back to sleep on me, so i could omly doze till he woke for the day at 6.50am. this is typical and i am sick of it - i need more sleep!

he eats three good meals and two snacks a day, too!

Hi woodlands , I became convinced this week that dc3 DOES need to feed at night. She woke at 12 then at 3am 2 nights ago and at 3 I rocked her to sleep but she kept waking after 10mins sleep, finally I fed her and put her in her cot awake and she settled herself and slept til morning. We've had 2 good nights this week with only one night feed and other nights with 2 feeds and/or early morning waking. She's moving into her own room on saturday, I'll report back!