Stopping breastfeeding at night, still co-sleeping

[akimbu]

Does anyone have any experience of stopping breastfeeding at night and continued sleeping together in bed/or in the cot in the same room?

My DD is 15 months. I have bf and co-slept with her since she was born, although she has been in her cot sometimes during the night at different times.

For various reasons we now need to night-wean from the breast, (but she will still be BF during the day) and we would love to still all sleep together but it seems that many people's opinion is that because BF and Co-S go together so well that she would not be able to sleep thru the night with me in bed and not feed (even if she slept next to daddy).

I do want to keep her in the room with us but everyone keeps telling me if she stops night feeding she will have to go into her own room in order to sleep thru the night.

Thanks

I have linked to this loads of times but it is v. useful, we did a version of it although we don't really co-sleep (one or other DS comes in with us for part of the night fairly often though)

dr jay gordon

Good luck

We are in exactly the same position as you. We are trying to nightwean at the moment, by offering water instead of a feed between midnight and 6 am (she has a feed when I go to bed at around midnight, though NY resolution is to bring this forward to 11!). It's a bit hit and miss at the moment, though we've not been very consistent - we did two nights then Christmas hit and everything went awry and it was easier just to feed her, then another two nights before getting snowed in at my mum's without a sippy cup I was happy to have in bed with us. Some nights she has some water and goes back to sleep, some nights she screams, sometimes she just gets chatty, usually a combination of the three! Planning to perservere with it for another week or so and see if things settle down. If not then next plan is for DH to stop drinking for a few weeks and then she can sleep next to him and he can do all the settling.

I did start a thread about this recently, will see if I can find it for you ...

Here