Opportunity to night wean? 2yo sleeps through at mil, not at home

[muppet729]

I am tandem nursing a 1 year old (dd3) and my 2 1/2 year old (dd2) and I'd like to try and wean the 2 1/2 year old at least at night. After a REALLY long, consistent struggle, I convinced her that she gets "jug juice" in the chair before bed, and then not again until she wakes up (and I wake up too, otherwise she tells me after 10 seconds that she's fallen asleep and woken up ). This still amounts to about every 2 hours.

However, lately she's been spending random nights at my mil's who says that she sleeps straight through the night until 7am! It's possible that mil is stretching the truth a little bit, but this is frustrating for me because when she's with me she wakes up at least every 2 hours (sometimes hourly) to nurse. With my dd1, it didn't seem like as much of a big deal, but with tandem nursing, I'm already waking up with the baby and I have a hard time nursing them at the same time- it just feels ewww.

Am I wrong to think that since she can go the whole night with mil, that she should be able to go the whole night with me and not nurse? In a couple of weeks we may be able to try putting her in a different room with daddy to sleep and see if that works. I don't want to overly traumatize her or make this a huge, crying deal, but it irritates me that she does so well over there and with me she's up all the time!

Any thoughts?

[Carita]

nope - in fact, the same thing happened to me too. he will go back to sleep without nummies for my mom, but not for me. SO Now when DS wakes up in the middle of the night for tata, I tell him, "go to sleep, you can have some in the morning" He knows now that the sun = morning, so if the sun is up, its time to nurse! works about 90% of the time.

[spirit4ever]

When I had given birth to ds2, ds1 (2 1/2) slept thru the night for the first time with dh, I took that as an opportunity to nightwean cause I was not nursing two at night.. and I did tandem, he was old enough to understand that he needed to wait till the morning.

[muppet729]

I should also mention that I tried to night wean while I was pregnant (I was very motivated because it hurt so bad). For a full 5 months I did not nurse her from bedtime to sunrise- i got up with her and rocked her back to sleep instead. She DID NOT nurse for all that time at night and still she asked every night. She is very persistent... I"m hoping that the fact that she can go all night peacefully (if my mil can be believed) means that being a year older makes her more likely to be able to do this.

I'm just not sure if I should go completely cold turkey or just try to cut back... when she fights it and throws a fit in the middle of the night, it wakes up the baby since they both co-sleep...

[TinyMama]

Well, I'm not sure if this is what you want to hear, but when DD sleeps with me she nurses all.night.long. When she doesn't, she often STTN. That may be the reason your DD STTN when she's away from home. Just my experience.

ETA: When I cut DD back at night, I found it was less traumatic to cut out the whole night. She has no concept of "every 3 hours" but totally understands "when the sun comes up." Once she started sleeping regularly in her own room, I found I could stop night weaning, since her occasional wakeups weren't such a big deal anymore.

[muppet729]

Well, last night she went the whole night without nursing. She still woke up occasionally and asked, but when I told her that we had to wait until the sun came up, she'd just roll over and go back to sleep. I wasn't sure I wanted to fight about it, but I talked with her about it before she went to bed and made sure to poke her a little once the sun came up so that she could nurse before I got up to wake up her big sister. She's spending the night at my mil's tonight so I should get a peaceful night.

Let me just say too that this is hard for me for a couple of reasons- not the least of which is because I nursed my dd1 until she was four and I know that it wouldn't be as big of deal if I didn't have a second one who also wants to nurse a lot

[kiwiva]

I nightweaned DD at 28 months. As she was popping off and going to sleep some nights, I decided that she was realizing she could fall back to sleep without nursing so I took the opportunity. With her it took 4 nights of waking (she woke 1-2 times per night on average) and being mad and crying-both to lessening degrees each night. It wasn't hysterics; I was playing it by ear and if she had been really resistant would have stopped. After that she awoke a couple times but didn't ask to nurse and she and I have both been sleeping great since! If she does wake up she usually doesn't need any help to go back to sleep. It's been 7 mos and she sleeps 9-7 or 8 usually now.

Since last night went well, I'd try to stick with the no milk til sunshine. If you go back and forth it will be confusing. Though a week after we nightweaned she got sick and we went back to nursing at night for about a week. We needed to repeat the 4 nights of asking and being upset but then it was fine. We do have the odd night here and there where I will nurse her if needed but almost never necessary. The really cool thing about night weaning (aside from getting some great sleep finally) was that for weeks I was awoken every morning to a happy, excited shout of "Sunshine mama, sunshine!" A nice way way to wake up!