All night nursing is killing me. HELP!

[itokitty]

I have been in terrible pain for the last few weeks--gone to the chiropractor 4 times because I was in so much distress and unable to move my head/neck.

I have a 15 month old, who is so adorable and wonderful during the day, but can be quite a handful at night. Sometimes, nursing doesn't even do the trick to get her back to sleep. I either have to get up and rock (we share a queen with my hubby) or put her in the stroller. I know that seems weird, but she seems to like it and sometimes that is the ONLY place she will settle down and go to sleep, at least for a few hours.

I would like to wait a little longer, but at the same time, I think the night nursing is really destroying my body. It needs a little bit of recovery time from all the heavy lifting I do during the day.

Has anyone tried Dr. Gordon's method of night weaning? I'm so afraid to try it--that my daughter will just cry and cry and cry. Any thoughts?

[figmama]

i tried it with my ds at 16m and was so impressed with how the first few nights went that we went coldturkey after night 4 or 5 and he was cool with it (mostly).
we backtracked 2ms later after a move, but it only tooks a few night to get him back.
he still nurses
often during the day, but we are all getting more sleep at night

[BlackSheepPDX]

I'm not familiar with what Dr. Gordon's method entails, but we nightweaned at 18 months by simply having my DH take over night soothing (he had already been a big part of sleep soothing previously) and sleep alone with DD for three nights. She let him soothe her when she woke, and broke the habit of nursing at night. It was a pretty peaceful transition. I was going pretty much bat-$&(# crazy with the frequency of wakeups, and it was a matter of me needing to be able to get more reasonable length sleep cycles or I'd be useless to anyone.

[hezasan]

My DS is only about 7 mos, but I am with you on the whole breaking-my-back at night thing. For me, I think it's mostly because I have issues with my back anyway, and on our queen I end up staying in one position for long stretches at night (not what I was used to before!)
I don't know how lots of people seem to do it no problem -- maybe "normal" backs have no issues, or maybe there's some secret we don't know about. Anyone care to share?

[savithny]

I was really amused (or not?) when I read a book from the 1850s: "Mrs Beaton's book of Household Management," and found a passage where she tells young mothers not to just let babies latch on at will all night, because that is draining to the mother and leaves her back sore and her head feelign unrefreshed. I had to laugh because I remembered that feeling!

Anyway, I found that the best thing for me, in general, was to *not* free-feed while co-sleeping and not develop a paradigm where I was accessible at any point throughout the night and had to conform my body's position to make that possible. That way I could position myself for comfort rather than constant nursing, and I'm sure this also made nightweaning that much easier.

For us, even cosleeping, a nursing session had a beginning, middle, and end, and required action from me to start it. Whenever I slipped on that, thinking "Oh, I'll get so much more sleep if I just leave her latched on," I regretted it the next morning on several levels.

(Disclaimer: I was a part-time cosleeper, in that my babies did not start out the night in our bed. They went to sleep much earlier than DH and I, in their own bed, and joined us when they woke in the wee hours).

[bam]

Originally Posted by itokitty

Has anyone tried Dr. Gordon's method of night weaning? I'm so afraid to try it--that my daughter will just cry and cry and cry. Any thoughts?

I took one look at that method and didn't have a good feeling about it; just like you, the feeling of hearing my little one cry his heart out in DH's arms or mine and finally give up in exhaustion would not do. So I am using the No Cry Sleep Solution by Pantley and it's working great. It takes more time and you have to read a book, but there is no drama, no crying and it works.

Good luck