Weaning night feeds at 9 months old

[madeleines_mom]

My baby girl is 9 months old and she still wakes up lots of times at night to nurse. I give in and nurse her because I don't want to let her cry in her crib, and it's the quickest and easiest way to get her back to sleep. However it seems everyone I talk to (her doctor included) thinks it's crazy that I still do this so often (for example, last night she woke up five times and I nursed her 4 times). I'm wondering how I should go about weaning her from these feeds in hope of one day getting her to STTN. Am I the only one still letting her snack in the middle of the night? We recently stopped co-sleeping and now she's in her crib all night which has worked very well for our family. She's a very big girl and our bed simply wasn't big enough for the three of us. I almost fell out of the bed countless times with her in there too.

Any advice for me?

[TheGirls]

You are not the only one, and you are not crazy to keep meeting her needs. My DD is 15 months and still nurses at night. She nurses less at night when she sleeps with me though, and I don't have to get up for it, so I would kick DP out of bed before DD at this age (or go sleep in the nursery with her).

Many 9month olds still need to eat at night. Many more need the comfort if they wake and realize they are alone. Separation anxiety is coming into play at that age, and they still don't understand that you exist when they can't see you.

Unless I had a very compelling reason to do so, I wouldn't restrict nursing at all for a child under a year.

[BookishVonLiberal]

My 10mo nurses at night. Multiple times.
I would not even attempt night-weaning at this point because it would make both of us miserable.

[alegna]

9 months is much to early to attempt parent-led nightweaning.

My kids nursed on and off at night (would have stretches of STTN, then not)

Ds is 15 months and still nurses once or twice at night.

-Angela

[madeleines_mom]

Thank you for all of your quick replies!

I also have another question. DD's growth has never really followed a curve. She was born in the 50th percentile (almost 7 lbs), and quickly went up to the 70th, then 80th, then 90th percentiles. At 6 months it was off the charts, and now it's WAY off the charts. It keeps going up and up. I can't help but wonder if it's because I may be overfeeding her. I don't know any other babies who nurse as much as her at her age, and I guess I just worry that her frequent nursing could be why she is gaining weight at such a fast pace. I wouldn't be worried if she stayed on a curve.... i.e. if she'd been off the charts for a while now that would be fine, but to keep getting further and further off the charts? She's 9 months old tomorrow and 25lbs just to give you an idea. She's 29 or 30 inches tall.

[betsyj]

Are you or your husband big people? Genetics can enter in here.

[paxye]

Originally Posted by madeleines_mom

Thank you for all of your quick replies!

I also have another question. DD's growth has never really followed a curve. She was born in the 50th percentile (almost 7 lbs), and quickly went up to the 70th, then 80th, then 90th percentiles. At 6 months it was off the charts, and now it's WAY off the charts. It keeps going up and up. I can't help but wonder if it's because I may be overfeeding her. I don't know any other babies who nurse as much as her at her age, and I guess I just worry that her frequent nursing could be why she is gaining weight at such a fast pace. I wouldn't be worried if she stayed on a curve.... i.e. if she'd been off the charts for a while now that would be fine, but to keep getting further and further off the charts? She's 9 months old tomorrow and 25lbs just to give you an idea. She's 29 or 30 inches tall.

She is following her own curve, that is what is important... is she healthy, happy, growing, learning? That is what you should be looking at...

my ds was way off the charts... born at 10 lbs, 30 lbs at 6 months, 44 lbs at a year. He only started eating solids at 11-12 months and even then wasn't eating much until he was about 18 months...
He didn't nurse more or less than my others and my milk wasn't "rich" like some people were trying to say... (I was tandem nursing and ds#2 is a smaller kid) We ended up seeing and endocrinologist and all they could say was that he is just a normal kid and they had no explanation...

At 9 months all my kids went though being very distracted in the day and not nursing much, but making up for nursing at night... (even my first ds that was sleeping through before that time started to wake up again) they also woke more often because their brains were so busy with all the new skills they were learning...

Night nursing is not a problem at all...it is normal and healthy. If it was so "rare" then people wouldn't have to ignore their kids needs at night and "train" them to sleep through...

Listen to what your child needs... not what others think your child needs...

[Magali]

My son is 2.5 and still wakes up to nurse in the night. I can't even imagine how awful it would have been for both of us if I decided to night wean him at 9 months. Sure, it can be tiring when he wakes up to nurse but for us it's just the way it is, and imo, it's a lot easier to nurse him back to sleep rather than let him cry. Fwiw i think your doctor is crazy to even suggest night weaning at such an age. You are doing everything right by nursing your baby when she needs it.

[Magali]

Originally Posted by paxye

Night nursing is not a problem at all...it is normal and healthy. If it was so "rare" then people wouldn't have to ignore their kids needs at night and "train" them to sleep through...

This.

If babies were meant to sttn then maybe they would be born with huge tummies so that they could stock up before going down for the night.

[madeleines_mom]

Thank you everyone.
I frequent another board and I can tell you I would not have gotten the same replies over there. If I hear one more time that DD needs to learn how to "self soothe" herself I think I'm going to scream!! If babies were supposed to self soothe, don't you think they would naturally know how to do it, and we wouldn't need to train them how? I definitely am not going to sleep train, I can't stand listening to her cry. I just wasn't sure if night feeding was still okay or not. Looks like I'm in good company in the middle of the night though!

[lilacblue]

I had posted a similar issue last night. My dd is 21 lbs at 6.5 months and over 26". I am worried about overfeeding or dd associating food with comfort (my dr said I should watch this so she doesn't associate comfort with food later in life. But I don't care for my dr. very much.)

I like the replies you got and in my heart I believe all is well, but like you I was doubting if it was okay. DD is teething and that seems to be playing a role. But I know how you feel, sometimes I wonder if she should self-soothe, but the way I am beginning look at it is: they are dependent on us for a reason!

I really like Dr. Sears, the attachment theory etc.

[madeleines_mom]

lilacblue- Yes, I just finished reading your post and all your replies. My DD is teething right now too, which could explain the five night wakings lately instead of the usual three. I have the Dr. Sears "Baby Book" and I quite like his theories as well. The thing is, I think I'm going to wean her at 1 year, and I'm wondering how on earth she's going to get through the night w/o the boob!

[Zimbah]

I'm trying to nightwean my 10 month old. I'm going back to work soon and I really can't keep getting up multiple times a night to feed her, I just can't do it. I don't bedshare with DD anymore (although I did for the first few months) because I get really touched out, and in any case I can rarely fall asleep while she's feeding. I started doing NCSS a couple of months ago to break the nursing to sleep association, and she has learned how to put herself to sleep (with someone there with her) without the boob. It was not a "no cry" solution, there have been some tears, but at no point was she left to cry on her own, and now she settles down pretty easily.

So now I've started trying a modified Jay Gordon nightweaning method - yes I know he says it's for 12 months upwards, but as I said, I really can't cope with the broken nights anymore. For the past week I've been feeding her every time she wakes, but only for a couple of minutes. Then after a couple of minutes I unlatch her and put her back into her cot. She cries for maybe 10 seconds then falls back to sleep. If she doesn't settle then I bring her back into the bed with me and she drops off to sleep (which, in itself, is amazing to me) then I transfer to the cot. I'm going to keep doing this for a couple of weeks, then try to reduce the length of time I feed her for, and hope that eventually she won't need the boob at all in the night. If nothing else, it should (I hope) mean that even if she wakes at night and needs attention she might not need to feed and would be happy with DH comforting her instead of me - so I could get a night off and catch up on some much-needed sleep.

If you're happy with continuing night feeds then I don't see any reason at all to nightwean, but if not then there are ways to try to reduce it without resorting to CIO.

[RoadWorkAhead]

Donning my flame proof suit, but I've found a combo of a late solid feeding plus a feeding right before I go to sleep means that we typically only have 2-3 wakings during my sleep hours now. I was pulling out my hair over more, and I have no regrets at cutting it back a little. At a year, we'll slowly encourage it down to 2 at most. I'm only human and I've got to be physically and emotionally available to my other 2 children, so decent sleep is really important around here.

[paulamc]

DS, at 11 months, still wakes several times in the night. He goes through periods where it's more or less - it tends to be more when he's teething. (We have other issues now that he's just learned to crawl/ pull up to standing/ get himself to a seated position independently. He wants to practice his skills at bedtime, and one time this week he wanted to do so in the middle of the night!). Anyway, nursing at night is totally normal.

A few months ago it had gotten really frequent, like every hour to two rather than every two to three, and I considered having DH help soothe him part of the time so that he was nursing only every three hours or so. In the end I didn't do that because he started teething and I wanted to be there to soothe him.

He's back to every two to three hours now (granted, sometimes more) and somehow it just doesn't bother me as much anymore. My thrush is gone, thank goodness. Also, I've been going to bed really early (8-9pm) so that even if he wakes a lot I get plenty of hours of sleep.