Help! Night weaning a co-sleeping 3 yr old

[megr]

My son just turned 3. I co-sleep with him and he nurses to fall asleep and throughout the night (for comfort as opposed to feeding). It's really time to night wean (or just totally wean since he doesn't really nurse during the day any longer)!

Problem is: he's been having some really bad nights with night waking. For about the last 2 months, he has been periodically waking up and is FURIOUS. It has taken him up to an hour to calm down and he's very hard to comfort. The only thing that works is getting him distracted with something else eventually. Also, he can do this 2 to 3 times a night. We've had a couple of bad nights so even though I really am ready to night wean now I nursed him to sleep and will nurse him during the night for now just so he can get some decent sleep because it's been affecting him during the day (temper tantrums and power struggles).

I have to be out of town for 4 days and 3 nights at the end of this week for work. This is the first time I will be away from him for more than a couple of hours (I work from home with him) and I've certainly never been away overnight. My husband will be pulling daddy duty. I'm nervous about the trip, but I am looking at it as an opportunity to make a clean break. He obviously won't night nurse those 3 nights, so I think I should just build on that and tell him the milk factory is closed when I get back. I'm really afraid of how he is going to react when he wakes and I deny him milk. He gets so very ANGRY when he night wakes now and I'm gladly giving him the breast. Any ideas/suggestions? Or do we just tough it out? I think my husband will be exhausted by the time I get back so I don't think he'll be able to continue to do night duty.

Should I continue to co-sleep or does that just make it harder for him to forget the breast? I sometimes think he doesn't rest as well when I'm in the bed with him; I think he may rouse more easily with me there. Or would quitting co-sleeping as well as night weaning be too much to handle?

I'd really appreciate any suggestions, experiences, encouragement you can offer because I'm feeling pretty pessimistic and worried. Thanks!!!

[ASusan]

Briefly, DS is 27 mos, and there are some parallels between your experience and ours. Doesn't nursing during the day (I WOH); nurses/nursed to sleep and several times throughout the night and extended nursing from about 5am to 7am. Daddy is able to put to sleep, and to sometimes comfort in the night, although DS had been asking pretty much exclusively for me in the middle of the night. In terms of co-sleeping, DS starts the night in his own room on a double futon and DH carries him in to join us in our room when we settle down for the night around 1am, or when he wakes after midnight, we just bring him to our room. We do have some difficult nights due to itchy eczema, infrequent wheezing, and generally allergy intolerance gut issues. These have led me to be lenient about night nursing as a mechanism of comfort.

I left for 5 days-4 nights 2 weeks ago. I had been away from him before, but that was about a year ago. When I returned, I told DS that nurses ("nurse!" is how he asks) went to sleep at night. He can nurse to go to sleep at bedtime, but if he wakes in the night, then he needs to go back to sleep because nurses are sleeping. Nurses wake up in the morning when we get up. (I made that the arbitrary time that the alarm goes off - 6:15.)

Eh...it's been working ok. The first few nights were a trial. He was pissed at 2am...cried, arched his back...I had to carry him back to sleep. The second night, when he cried, I told him he needed to be quiet because Daddy was sleeping, and did he want to go to his room (with me) to cry? Yes. But he thought that he was going to get to nurse there, so he was pissed about that. When he realized he wasn't getting any, he asked to go back with daddy. And since then, he's used daddy for comfort more than me in the middle of the night, although he has rested a couple of times with me without asking to nurse. He has also asked to go to bed early "sleepytime!" because he thinks it will allow him to nurse. I made the mistake of thinking he was actually ready for bed when he asked at 6:30 the other night. I put him down - he didn't want a bath or story - and he slept for 20 minutes after he nursed. He was then up until 11:30. little twerp.

So, we've pretty much night weaned, but I still nurse him to sleep and when he gets up in the am. I am willing to nurse on demand during the day, but he doesn't often ask.

You might find this passage nice to read - from Sandra Steingraber's Having Faith: An Ecologist's Journey to Motherhood. Click on Excerpt from Chapter 12. http://www.steingraber.com/