How did you night wean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP and PP, curious how old your babies are/were. I'm in the same position of trying to night wean my nine month old. The frustrating part is that he slept 12 hours through the night from 3-6 months, but has been waking up usually once per night (sometimes more) wanting to nurse since six months (it seemed to start with teething). If I or my husband try to rock him back to sleep, it will easily take an hour plus to get him back to sleep. Letting him cry isn't ideal because our older child will wake up. If I nurse him, he usually will go right back to sleep, but I feel like he shouldn't need to eat at night anymore (he's not small, 70% for weight). My older child just started sleeping through the night at 6 months and I never had to night wean or sleep train, so I'm struggling with how to get my baby back to sleeping all night.

I’m the PP who relied on the “send in DH, the boobless” method, and we did it at 9MO.

I do suggest the website babysleepscience about interpreting night wakings, though. When my baby has been asleep for eight+ hours and wakes I assume she is actually hungry or thirsty, and a brief snack has her right back to sleep.

Thanks! The last part you mentioned is what I’m struggling with. It has usually been about 8 hours since he last ate when he wakes up (around 3 am). So it’s not inconceivable that he is really hungry. I feel bad denying him milk, but I really want an uninterrupted night of sleep.

I would make sure you are offering a high-fat, high-calorie dinner before bed. Nut/seed butters, full-fat yogurt, that kind of thing. Then I would do the approach PP mentioned - send in DH to soothe back to sleep. There will be crying, but it will stop after a few nights. You could do CIO but if you don't want to wake your other kid then just making DH suffer through what could be a long time of soothing/rocking is the way to go (for most babies. unfortunately there are babies that actually get MORE upset when a parent is there, and if that is the case you just need to find a way to make CIO work for a couple days).

+1 to this, and because it’s summer you could even give DH a bottle with an ounce of water in case it’s thirst. My DD wanted nothing to do with it but it did lay to rest my concern that she was thirsty for hours...

Thanks for these tips! He's getting much better at eating table food, so I'm going to focus on making sure he is eating well in the evenings. I also like the water tip and will have DH try that when I send him in. He does usually get more upset if DH shows up instead of me, but hopefully that will help him decide to just keep sleeping.

[Anonymous]

This may be controversial, but once my son was sleeping through the night, if he woke up, I did not feed him. We would go in, rock him, comfort him, but if it was after say 10-11pm, we wouldn’t give him more food. The waking might go on for a couple days (teething, milestone, whatever), but after that he’d go back to sleeping, I believe because he didn’t get used to having a MOTN snack….

[Anonymous]

1. Give a bottle at bedtime after nursing to make sure they're completely topped off.
2. Feed them more during the day.
3. If they're still waking up hungry in the middle of the night, do a dream feed right before you go to bed. This will help them connect sleep cycles, because they won't wake up hungry.

And to second what others were saying. My pediatrician told me around 9 months to offer water first if he woke in the middle of the night.