PDA

View Full Version : Help! Want to night wean my cosleeping 14 month old



kristal
08-29-2008, 04:28 PM
I have a few questions here.

Our DS is 14 months and we are cosleeping. I am BFing him, he has *never* taken the bottle (though I tried alot), and doesnt show too much excitement for the sippy cup either.

He is still waking up 3-4 times a night to nurse (so yes, I am still sleep deprived). Is this normal? From what I read and hear, by this age he should be sleeping through the night, without waking up for middle of the night feedings. I want to wean him from the these middle of the night feedings, as I feel that because he is waking up every 2-3 hours, he is probably not going into deep sleep like he should and needs to.
But my concerns are:

1. I nurse him to sleep, so dont really know how much he's drinking before drifting off. What if he isn't drinking alot before sleeping and really is hungry in the middle of the night? He is on the lower side of the weight curve so I would hate to have him fall any further because I'm keeping him hungry at night.

2. I am at work all day. The only milk he drinks during the day is with cereal and as a fruit milkshake in the afternoon (spoon fed by the nanny). So he is probably reverse cycling where he's drinking most of his milk at night. In this situation, will I be doing the wrong thing by night weaning him? (As I said he doesnt take the bottle at all. From the sippy he'll drink maybe an once or so of milk, thats it. He drinks water from the sippy just fine.)

3. Will the co-sleeping make night weaning more difficult? Do I need to stop co-sleeping to get thru this? I am very happy co-sleeping, so do not want to stop if I dont need to.

4. Any tips about night weaning? I anticipate DS to be really upset about this whole thing- not looking fwd to all the heart wrenching cries :-(. So any tips to help me get thru this will be really appreciated!

Sorry for the long post! Thanks for reading.

kimberley-k
08-30-2008, 12:27 AM
Could he have cow's milk or soy milk in a sippy cup during the day to make up for some of the calories he'll be missing at night.

I didn't have too much trouble night weaning while co-sleeping, and I think my son was about that same age when we did it. I waited until I thought he could understand the concept of night and day, and kept it positive - when he wanted to nurse, I just said "You can have more milk when the sunshine comes" and patted him back to sleep. I don't remember it being much of an issue.

Good luck!

gatorsmom
08-30-2008, 01:07 AM
I have a few questions here.

1. I nurse him to sleep, so dont really know how much he's drinking before drifting off. What if he isn't drinking alot before sleeping and really is hungry in the middle of the night? He is on the lower side of the weight curve so I would hate to have him fall any further because I'm keeping him hungry at night.

2. I am at work all day. The only milk he drinks during the day is with cereal and as a fruit milkshake in the afternoon (spoon fed by the nanny). So he is probably reverse cycling where he's drinking most of his milk at night. In this situation, will I be doing the wrong thing by night weaning him? (As I said he doesnt take the bottle at all. From the sippy he'll drink maybe an once or so of milk, thats it. He drinks water from the sippy just fine.)



To get my twins to sleep better at night, I pushed more food (formula included) during the day. After about a week, they were sleeping better through the night. I'm thinking this was because they were used to getting more of their daily calories at night and so ate less during the day. Once they were eating more during the day, they didn't need to wake at night. My babies are thin too, so I understand your weight concerns.

I don't think it will be a piece of cake for you to wean him from co-sleeping. There are different tactics you could use, depending on what you are comfortable with. One way would be to gradually get him used to being laid down in his crib at night while you pat his back. If he drifts off to sleep- great! He'll wake eventually and you'll either bring him back to your bed or get up and pat his back some more while he's in his crib. If you keep trying I'm guessing that after a week, he'll get used to the idea of spending more and more of the night in his crib. If you feed him more during the day while trying to get him to spend more of the night in his crib, he'll sleep longer in his crib and won't take long before he's stayed asleep the whole night in his crib.

hth (I'm kind of sleep deprived today, ironically enough, so I hope that made sense)

fattytuna
08-30-2008, 01:17 AM
I just went through part of this not too long ago. DS has always slept in our bed, never took bottles (EBM or formula), didn't nurse when awake. The only time he nursed was when he was falling asleep while napping and going to bed. He was like clock work at night, waking up at 1am, 3am and then about 6am for his feedings. After he turned 1 and could have cow's milk, I started to think about weaning out the night time feedings. I wasn't sure if he's just thirsty at night, so before the weaning started, I taught him how to use the Lil' Topper sippy cap that you can practically screw onto any bottled water and it's leap-proof. DS always drank his milk and water from a straw, so it took a while for him to get used to the sippy cap concept. I figured at least this way, when he wakes up at night, he can just lie there and I will try to offer him some water.

It took about two nights to wean him down to one feeding at night. Every time he woke up, I'd either offer him his pacifier or offer him a bottle of water with the sippy cap. At first he kept pushing it away and as DH puts it, he wanted "the good stuff". Eventually he gave up and took water during the first two times that he woke up. Third time around he just would not budge. By then I'm so tired I just gave in and let him have the last feeding. So that went along for a couple of weeks. Then I started to stretch out the last feeding and waited until daylight, so that he will associate feeding with day time. Eventually we dropped the last feeding. But now and then, especially when he's sick or teething, I'd give in and let him have some comfort for that last morning feeding. One thing though, DS is more addicted to his pacifier than ever. I do what I can now and I'll figure out how to wean him off his pacifier later.

As for co-sleeping, when DS was doing better with the weaning, DH removed the dropside of the crib and pushed it against my side of our bed. We were lucky that the height of the our bed and the crib mattress aligned very well. I'd put him down in the crib and lie next to him and pat him to sleep. Although if he wakes up at night he will try to crawl onto me then I'll offer him some water and put him right back into the crib. So for now, at least he is sort of out of our bed. I'm still working on my next step.

One more thing, DS always hated to be swaddled. Even when he co-slept with us, his legs are always outside the covers - he sweats a lot. But I found out that once we sort of moved him into the crib, he sleeps much better after I started putting him in a Halo sleep sack.

Good luck and hope this helps!

JTsMom
08-30-2008, 09:03 AM
I wouldn't worry too much about "normal"- I'd concentrate more on what's going to work for you particular set of circumstances. My DS was a little closer to 2 when I night-weaned him, mainly b/c it wasn't much of an issue before then. We cosleep too, and I think in some ways that does make it a little more difficult b/c your breast is so close, but there are some ways around it for sure. The key, for us, was to involve DH. We did a loose version of Dr. Jay Gordon's night weaning plan which you can find on his site.

In our case, DS wasn't really hungry- he'd just wake up and comfort nurse back to sleep, and he started doing it more and more, and I was getting so sleep deprived I couldn't stand it anymore.

Basically, when he' wake up, DH would take him out to the living room and rock with him. We also tried having DH sleep between us, but that didn't work as well. The first couple of nights were kind of rough- it took close to an hour for him to go back to sleep (but he was being held and comforted the whole time). Of course we did a lot of talking too, and I made a book with pictures of him growing up, and ended with something like "Jason is such a big boy now, he can sleep all night long, and mommy can sleep too, so she has lots of energy to play in the morning!". We read that a lot, and talked about letting the nummies get some sleep. LOL Another great thing that came out of it, was it brought DH and DS a lot closer. DH was finally able to get DS to sleep, and that was a HUGE relief for me!

Now, for your questions:

1. I can understand your concern there. I think I would try to push more calories/fat during the day. Will he eat yogurt? Avocado? If you want to go ahead with night-weaning, I'd try to do it slowly so he has time to figure out how to compensate during the day. If it doesn't work, you can always go back.

2. See #1

3. Nope! If something like I described above won't work, maybe you could try temporarily sleeping somewhere else, then move back once the nightweaning process is over.

4. It might not be as bad as you think- it sure wasn't for us! I thought DS would not go for it at all, but after the first couple of nights, he was fine, and we were all so much happier during the day. I'm very anti-cio, and I promise you, this was nothing like that. Is there any way you can sneak more nursing into the day? Is your job close enough that you could meet the nanny during lunch? Just go slow, remember you don't have to do anything that doesn't feel right, and that if you decide this isn't the right time, it won't last forever. Even though it might not feel like it right now, while you're sleep deprived and in the middle of it, this age goes really quickly!

kristal
09-02-2008, 06:36 PM
Thanks for all the responses and support!
I feel a bit relieved hearing that the night weaning process wasnt too bad for you guys. I'm hoping that DS will cooperate as well!

I'll try and see if I can push more calories into him during the day. He didn't like avacado the last time we tried it about a month back, but I'll try it again. yogurt- he has it sometimes but not too fond of it as yet..

JTsMOM- thanks for the tip on Dr. Gordon's website. I'll check it out.

fattytuna- your ds and mine seem to have similar traits :). My DS also gets kinda hot and never likes to be under covers. Even if I put the thinnest of covers on him, he'll kick them off within few minutes. I feel bad for him coz he's sleeping out in the cold while we are in comforters..but I guess thats the way he likes it. I've been thinking of getting the cotton sleep sacks too..guess I'll give them a shot.

Thanks all.