Night weaning..... or not?

I gradually night weaned at 9 months. Did a dream feed at 3am and shortened it by 2 mins a night over 2 weeks. I still feed at 10 pm in DD's sleep though. DD is quite a little one at 7kg, but seems to get through to 7.30 before feeding.

Ben has just turned 1 and I am still feeding at night but it is comfort feeding as he is not coping with teething at all. I will see what happens once these last teeth cut and go from there.

Jack was fed to sleep until about 9mths or so. I gradually stopped feeding to sleep and night weaning seemed to naturally follow although he still woke

When DS was about 4-5mths old I took him through the Sleep Sense Programme because he started waking up more frequently at night so that helped, but even prior to that I started waking him at around 11pm for a feed, and his next wake up would be around 3am initially and gradually it got later eg. 4am then 5am and so on until 7am so he will go through the night in that sense - so I achieved that by doing an 11pm feed and letting him do the rest.

As for dropping the 11pm feed I am yet to do that but he is a little bit fussy with food and so when he's had a really good dinner I notice he doesn't automatically wake around the 11pm mark and when I wake him it's just a small feed - whereas if he hasn't had much dinner, he is more hungry for a breastfeed. I'm waiting for him to get over his latest episode of teething and pick up a little bit in his eating before trying to stop the 11pm feed, and I'll do it just by putting his dummy in and hoping he'll go back to sleep all night! If that doesn't work, at the advice of Plunket, I'll go to the Family Cntr - they have some kind of sleep/settling video/advice for older babies that you can go to.

Hey. Ashley is 11.5 months. I wanted to stop feeding for a number of reasons (which I won't go into) and tried. I stopped night feeds and tried various things.

For 6 weeks I tried a dreamfeed at 10pm and then no feeds until 6am. Often she'd sleep until 6 so it was fine. If she woke before 6 she would cry for up to 3 hours if I didn't feed. I persisted. I tried staying with her while she cried but that didn't work. I tried controlled crying for 7 nights but that didn't work. I tried leaving her to cry but that didn't work. In total we tried for 3 months. We had a couple of colds / flus during that time so did have to feed during those but other than that we tried consistently for weeks and weeks. All that happened was that I got more sleep deprived! Her crying time never fell below 2 hours!

I know that sounds mad as it goes against what the books say. We were consistent. However she just knows when she wants milk and that is that. She is the same in the day...if she wants milk nothing will distract her. I'm working on that and hoping that slowly she will learn to look for hugs or something instead of milk for comfort.

Most babies are not like this and if you are consistent with whatever you do, they do get the message, usually within 3 to 7 nights. However, in our case, feeding is the best option. I do feel a bit grumpy about it as I personally do not believe for a second she needs the feed but she certainly wants it. And at the end of the day, when is life all about needs only? It is as much about what we want.

I also figure that most babies wake in the night reasonably often, wanting a cuddle or pamol or something so I may as well make that "something" milk as it only takes 5 mins and settles her without fail. Plus, Ashley only ever wakes once in 12 hours.

I always sore I would never feed my baby in the night after 1 but looks like I'm going to eat my words....! Ironic.

Hope whatever you decide works well for you.

Cooper seemed to stop needing night feeds at about 6 months. He still wakes but just resettles rather than the more urgent hungry cry he had previously. I tried giving him milk a few times because he was waking more often, rather than less but he'd only drink a tiny bit and it wouldn't put him to sleep like it used to. I think that might have been around the time I stopped feeding to sleep during the day too, so may have just been what he thought he needed to get back to sleep. He'd also slept through a number of times at that point.

Wow this is an interesting thread! We in theory night weaned Clodgah when she was about 9/10 months old I think....but having said that, lately our nights have been TERRIBLE . I've ended up feeding her about 4-5am and then thats it, she's done for the night...time to get up! Grrrrr. I don't know why the change, could be teething or maybe my milk has changed now I'm pg....but it's wearing us out!

I'm just wonderinf how many of you Mamas are BF in bed vs getting up to the baby's nursery (or wherever (s)he sleeps? I've been BF in bed and wonder if thats the problem. Maybe I need to get up and use the BF chair in Clodagh's nursery so she's less distracted by us being in bed with her? She just refuses to co sleep anymore lol.

Sorry for thread-jack!!!!!

I night weaned at about 8 months old.  I decided to do it then because I knew that once DD stopped feeding at night she started sleeping through but I wanted to wait until he was fully accustomed to solids before stopping his overnight feeds.

Until then he was feeding at about 10pm and 1am.  I gradually stopped the 1am feed by offering less and less (he would fall asleep during the feed so I'd just feed for a couple of minutes until he was asleep then put him in his cot).  Then after a few days of that I just got up and cuddled him back to sleep and after a couple of days of that he stopped waking.  I did the same thing with the 10pm feed once he was consistently sleeping without the 1am feed.

Emmecat, Andrew refuses to co-sleep too.  He will occasionally nap with me but after about 40 mins he starts climbing around the bed and bouncing on me (not fun at 5am).  I always fell asleep during the night feeds so when I was weaning him off them I had to feed him in his room where I was less likely to stay asleep.

Although he is weaned if he is very sick and miserable and cuddles won't work then I give him a comfort suckle no matter what time of day or night it is.

My 14 month old still feeds between 1-3 times at night. She is little too - only 7kg. She has gone through periods of sleeping 12 hours at night without a feed, but I just go with what she wants as I am trying to fatten her up!

We have only just nightweaned. Had sort of tried a few times before but perhaps Jude (or we!) weren't ready. So he hasn't fed at during the night for a few weeks now but has still been waking up during the night except for a few occasions including last night where he slept right through from 7pm to 6.40am - Bliss! Hopefully it continues.

We have been leaving him for a while to see if he self settles - if not we go in and pat him, shhh him and stay with him until he goes back to sleep but we don't get him up out of his cot. Tried controlled crying but that didn't even last a night - there was no way it was working! Tried getting him up out of cot and hugging him but he would just start up again as soon as we put him back down - worse than before! So now he cries in his cot for a bit while we pat and shh him so he knows we are there.

For the last two days we have been safety pinning his safety sleep shut. I'm not entirely happy about this but the velcro on the safety sleep is not as tough as it used to be and Jude is very strong - so he would just rip out of it and stand up and cry at the cot rails. We were having to hold him down and pat him to get him back to sleep. It seems a bit like cheating to do this but it's what is working for us at the moment. And the safety pinning seems to be helping a lot.

I'm really bad with early morning starts though. I would love for our mornings to start at 7. But Jude has sometimes woken at 5. I don't mind getting up at 3 or 4 but at 5.30 - 6 I'm so tired! So if he wont resettle at 6 then I cheat also and bring him into our bed to feed as I don't want to get up and sit in the chair in his room to feed him!

We decided to night wean as Jude had been not very hungry - was just comfort sucking and falling asleep on the breast or directly after (only doing that at the nightfeeds though - he usually drops off to sleep with no protest or feed directly beforehand during his day naps). However, if he starts waking again and wanting a feed because he is actually hungry (hopefully not at this age but you never know!) then I would have no qualms about letting him have night feeds again.

It's funny isn't it - sometimes I feel bad for not nightweaning him earlier because of pressure you feel from other people and sometimes I feel bad for choosing when to nightwean instead of Jude choosing when HE would like to nighwean. Gah, can't win