Gentle night weaning advice...

[SleepForTheWeak]

Hi, DD is 9 months and currently feeding on average 5 times a night. I've tried settling her in other ways but she just goes ballistic, I've persevered for up to 90mins at a time but in the end only boob will do.

I'm tired and I really need more than 2hours of sleep at a time.

I'm not sure about cutting out feeds altogether straight away, is there a more gradual approach?

Thanks

Google Dr Jay Gordon - his method has worked for 2 of my DC - but they were a lot older than yours. could you co-sleep? I get 7-8 hours on average by doing this with brief wakings to latch baby on, she's 7 months. might be worth a go to get more sleep

How does your baby go to sleep? If feeding to sleep, have you tried just putting her in the cot and letting her settle herself? That combined with a developmental leap (I think) had a big effect on our terrible sleeper- gone from constant night waking, co sleeping, feeding to pretty much sleeping through. Some crying but we didn't ever leave her on her own to cry. 9 months is quite a difficult time. Just to assure it can just get better without that much stress! Can yu get your other half involved at bedtime/during the night?

Thanks for the replies.

Have tried co sleeping but she wakes up crying and only latches on I cradle position so have to kind of wake up for that. Also always wake up with sore back from scrunching myself into corner of bed!!

We just started leaving her to self settle, it took a while (she would either feed to sleep or suck my little finger) but she's now going to sleep with just me singing to her from a chair at other side of room. If anything, night wakings have got worse since then :(.

She goes bananas if my husband goes in to see her, like as if he's sticking pins in her (which he assures me he's not!)

Hi SleepForTheWeak - would you like us to move this over to Infant Feeding where you might get some more response?

Yes please - thanks Becca

I was surprised by how successful using a baby bottle of water was. My son was over one when I did it, but he was still waking once every night and breastfeeding back to sleep.
It took a few days but he then just stopped waking up in the middle of the night (still having a feed last thing at night and first thing in the morning- sometimes he goes back to sleep for a bit). Now, if he does wake at night he's a lot easier to settle. I was convinced at first that I was just replacing one habit with another - I was happy to be proved otherwise

She won't take a bottle unfortunately, going to try her with a sippy cup of water though when she wakes up (which will be soon!)

I was on auto pilot and didn't take the sippy cup!! Will take to bed tontryvher with it NEXT time. In approx 2 hours...

Good luck

Water got thrown - as predicted!!