Ready for nightweaning, Pantley or Dr. Jay Gordon?

[dance]

Hello,
My almost 13 month old is still up almost every 2 hours and I am very very very tired. We cosleep so "all" I do is latch her on, but still I could really do with 4 or more hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I have already made some vague attempts at nightweaning but I am such a pushover ( and SO tired!) that I would always just give in and give her the boob. That's what always resulted in more sleep.
But now I really want to TTC #2 as well and there is no PPAF in sight . I believe nightweaning can help with that too!
What I have tried a bit is this thing where I don't let her fall asleep on the boob and unlatch her and I have had moderate success with that. Maybe 50-50.

The thing is I always end up feeling guilty too and just too tired to deal with the crying but then the morning comes and I am full of plans to wean again.

I have just purchased The No cry sleep solution and I am aware of Dr. Jay Gordon's plan.

Any suggestions? Experiences? Advice?

[LynnolaS]

Haven't really tried either method but just wanted to wish you luck. I have a 13 month old and we were working on sleep (working on getting him to sleep more in his crib), and the last few nights my husband has brought him to bed when he wakes up and he's not needed to nurse until much later than usual, like 3:30 one night and 4:45a.m. last night! This is amazing for my all-night nurser/frequent waker. So we weren't even actively trying to nightwean, but going to bed with dad has meant less wakings and less night nursing. I've gotten some great sleep and I feel like a new woman.

Whatever you try, I wish you luck~ our little ones need rested mamas!

[Steph152]

I'm using a combination of the two methods. Pantley's book is great, but it's basically just a list of different suggestions to try and ways to make and execute your own plan. I also like Dr. Gordon's plan, but I altered it to fit my family better. The Sears book on sleep is worth reading, too, if you have the time.

My little guy is 13 months old too, and he was still waking up every 45-90 minutes to nurse until recently when we started really working on night weaning. We are doing a bedtime routine, then DS's dad lies in bed with him until he is asleep. I do not let him fall asleep while nursing at all throughout the night. Gordon's plan says to select a seven hour window when you do not nurse, but I thought that was a bit extreme to start with, so we started with three hours and are slowly stretching that to at least seven. DS has gotten pretty upset, but we can tell that he is just angry, not sad or hungry. We (both parents) just take turns comforting him any way we can besides nursing, and we keep a cup of water for him next to the bed to offer him. We've been working with this for about a week, and we are up to five hours of time when I will not nurse him when he wakes. It is getting easier! He sleeps more soundly and wakes up less often. When he does wake, he is settling down without nursing without much fuss.

I think you might have some luck if you go over two or more plans and then come up with something that will work best for your family. Then you just really need to commit to it, which was hard for me too. I understand that at two in the morning it seems easier to just nurse and go back to sleep, so try to get excited about it and get your partner to help you stick with it. It helped us to sit down together to talk about all the reasons we really wanted to night wean and how we were both sure DS was ready. Then we came up with a SPECIFIC plan for the first night. Every evening we talk about how the plan worked the night before, tweak it a little for the night ahead and have a little pep talk ("This is getting easier! We just need to stick to it. We're all doing a great job....etc.). Staying focused on the plan and goal has helped a lot. Good luck!

[dance]

great advice girls! It's so nice to know I am not alone.

I think I am going to try and involve the DH a bit more and see what happens. The sitting down together and planning and getting excited I think is a good idea and I will try this tomorrow.

7 hours is a bit long to begin with for us too. Maybe I'll just try cutting out the session that comes after the midnight one, that is the one that bothers me the most.

[justKate]

Originally Posted by dance

great advice girls! It's so nice to know I am not alone.

I think I am going to try and involve the DH a bit more and see what happens. The sitting down together and planning and getting excited I think is a good idea and I will try this tomorrow.

7 hours is a bit long to begin with for us too. Maybe I'll just try cutting out the session that comes after the midnight one, that is the one that bothers me the most.

Us too. I started with NCSS, and used the "pantley pull off", which DD accepted really well. Then I started popping her off earlier per pantley. Then we cut out nursing between her bedtime (7:30) and my bedtime (10:00), and she quickly stopped waking up between the 7:30 and 10:00 nurse. Of course if I don't get up there at 10, she's screaming for it. Then we started trying to soothe her without the boob between 10 and 4, which worked 50% of the time. Then she mysteriously dropped her 5:00 a.m. nurse. Now we're down to only the 7:30, the 10:00, and one in the night, and it is so much more manageable. The whole process took about 2 months and she's 13.5 mos. now.

Two things that resonated with me after reading Dr. Gordon's sleep article:
1. A 12+ month old baby can go 7 hours without eating. So I stopped thinking that she was hungry all of the time, and realized how much nursing is about comfort for her.
2. A 12+ month old baby who has coslept her entire life is not scared when denied the boob for a few hours. She is angry. And understandably so! When I started treating DD as understandably angry rather than terrified and hungry, it was easier to continue to comfort her without becoming distressed myself.

HTH. Good luck!

[dance]

yes that helps!

It's actually also a good idea to drop the nursing before I go to bed too, that way I am in better shape and less likely to give in... Plus that would mean DH and I could maybe get a babysitter at some point and have dinner out somewhere. It's been so long!

[Altair]

I did a combo of the 2 methods starting right around 11 months (but not really nightweaning until 12 months).

I started by having Dad just be more involved with wakeups, and not nursing every time. Yes, he was mad a few times, but he loves his dad and always fell back asleep eventually. This brought us from 1-2 hour nursings to 3-4 hour nursings, though he still woke up 1-2 hours. We also experimented with putting up the side to our sidecar (so turning our sidecar co-sleeping arrangement into a crib pressed right next to the bed) I just brought him into our (now squished) bed at some point mid-night.

When this was going smoothly I started scheduling it a bit more. He goes to bed at 7, so I decided to go by 5s-- nursing any time after a midnight waking, then not again until after a 5AM waking. He accepted this readily, (mostly by having Dad stay with him, meaning I left the room and slept a few hours on the couch, if he was not letting me comfort him any way but nursing), but was still waking up every few hours, if not more.

Nothing made a difference in our night wakings really until I nightweaned the last feeding (midnight) and also helped him learn to fall asleep in the crib. I took out the midnight feeding again by having dad comfort him with me out of the room. Wasn't nearly so bad as we expected. He just slept on dad's chest all night.

To teach him to fall asleep in the crib, I spent a few nights at bedtime taking a really long time. So we nurse, cuddle a few minutes, then I lay him in the bed sleepy. If he gets up, I kiss his head and lay him back down. If he lays down and looks sleepy, I lay down on the bed next to him where he can see me through the crib slats. Repeat for almost 2 hours the first night (no crying involved at all)! But as of that night, he slept longer stretches and was VERY quick to fall back asleep, just giving him the pacifier. He's easier now too I don't have to pat him as much or even stay right next to the bed, I bring a book in now and sit near him and everytime he gets up kiss him and lay him down and he actually seems to enjoy it. Falls asleep after awhile, but I'm not stressed at all since there's no crying and I'm just relaxing and reading.

After a few nights of this he's hardly waking up at all until his 5AM feeding. OH MY GOD I can't even believe it!!!