Longer sleep stretches

[47jennifer]

Ds is 13 months old has co-slept with us since birth. He's always woken up a lot at night, but lately it's really leaving me feeling run down. He's up every 1-2 hours, and he sometimes settles quickly, but often needs a long stretch of nursing. This is starting to really bother me! Lately it's starting to feel uncomfortable and sometimes painful when he nurses.

I don't want to night wean him yet. It seems he still needs the milk at night. But I need some longer sleep stretches to help me get enough rest and have enough energy in the morning. Is it possible to partially night wean...like no nursing between 12-5 or something? Or is there a good way to encourage longer sleep stretches? We've tried having Daddy provide comfort, but DS just fights him until he can get back to me. Occasionally I can rub his back to get him back to sleep, but usually it just escalates into screaming. He knows what he wants, and he's persistent!

Please help me get some sleep!

[zamia7]

The thing that has helped us is putting a full size matrress on the floor for ds. he still wakes a lot, butnot as much as he was, and if the boob isnt in his face he doesnt always want it. so i nurse him then get back into my bed.

[Louisep]

We partially night weaned at 12 months using Jay Gordon's method. I blocked off 10-4 (he is in bed 6-6). It was really easy. I can't say it helped the wakings - maybe a little. But what it did help was getting Dad involved with wakings.

Soon after DS weaned altogether (14 months). We also dropped to one nap and the rest of his teeth came in. He now SLEEPS! He wakes once or twice and takes a long nap (used to be a catnapper). My dh and I switch out sleeping with him. I tell you all that because I don't know what helped exactly and I kind of just think it was time and the teeth. I really don't think weaning helped for us but he wasn't much of a comfort nurser anyway.

[LadyCatherine185]

He could be getting molars/canines in and that could be causing the extra waking.

For us, DS didn't start sleeping longer stretches until we started nightweaning at around 19 months. After about of week of me limiting his nursing he started sleeping 3-5 hours at a time (as opposed to 1-2 hours at a time). We then moved him into his own bed and had Daddy take over nighttime, and he now sleeps 5-8 hours every night! A few things were key in this though-- #1) he was ready (not necessarily wanting to, but he was old enough/secure enough to handle the change) and #2) consistency. If you try for 10 minutes with DH and baby cries and you come in and "rescue" him, he learns that if he cries he will get Mommy. Or if he cries for X minutes for milk and you give in, he will learn that if he cries he gets milk. He will never learn to accept DH for comfort if Mommy always comes to the rescue. We were very lucky that DS did as well as he did (barely protested to Daddy coming to him), but DH has been putting DS to bed initially for about a year now. So I say start with having DH do part of the nighttime routine and gradually phase DH in more, and Mommy out.

I also highly recommend reading "Sleepless in America" and google Dr. Jay Gordon's nightweaning article.

it will get better! good luck!

[lifeguard]

At 14 months we used the Jay Gordon method to nightwean ds. It worked wonderfully for us & we went from waking up 3-6 times a night to once a night. I still nurse him for that one wake up now so I guess he's not completely nightweaned. Doing this was one of the best things I did for us because the lack of sleep was destroying me.