reverse cycling - how long will it last?

[patronus]

i am finishing my second week back to work. dd is 13 weeks and prior to this week she had been sleeping about 8 hours a night for the last month. i knew we were lucky and i was really enjoying it!

we've got a nanny that comes to our house. dd takes a bottle just fine (loves it, in fact, because the flow is faster).

this week she's been up at 2:30, 4:30, & 6:30AM to eat and the lack of sleep is killing me.

she's always been a big comfort nurser so i'm not surprised that she's doing a bit of reverse cycling to get more boob time.

i certainly don't begrudge her time at the boob, but apparently i look tired enough for a coworker to ask me if i had a black eye.

i'm just wondering how long this will last. will she adjust or am i doomed to never sleep again?

[phathui5]

Honestly, there's no way to know at this point how long it will last. She could start sleeping at night, or she could keep wanting to nurse so she gets more time with you.

Are you already co-sleeping? I know that for me it helped me get more sleep while I was night nursing.

[kcstar]

You're not going to like this, but my 33-month-old still wakes up 2-3 times a night for milk. Usually the first is about the time I'm going to bed. We've sometimes been able to skip the ~2 am feeding, but he usually wants his morning milk around 5 or 5:30 am.

I've tried nightweaning. It's cut us down to about this. The last few weeks, he's actually started the night in his toddler bed, and moved to ours sometime after my bedtime.

Sometimes he wants more milk, and gets irate when he can't have it.

I've had several setbacks, when his great-grandma died, and then his grandma. His other grandma is ill now, and that could be part of the issue.

My absolute hardest time was in the third and fourth month. I ended up cosleeping because that was the closest I could get to rest, and there were many nights where he nursed All. Night. Long. Sometimes I could sleep, often I just got rest.

Once he finished his morning feeding, I got DH to take him so I could try to get a little bit of rest without nursing / grabbing / crying. It didn't always work, but usually 10-30 minutes would get me through a weekday. On weekends I slept in.

[texmati]

so sorry to say-- she'll probably keep reverse cycling. I just got back from a week vacation, and I noticed by thursday, he was waking up only once a night. but now that we are back to our usual routine-- up all the time now.

[patronus]

thanks guys.
she sleeps in a cosleeper attached to the bed.

i spoke to my lc yesterday and she suggested dh & i switch sides of the bed and that he comfort her if she woke up in the middle of the night. if he tried and she wasn't having it, then i would nurse her.

last night she wasn't nursing very well and we had a bumper crop of milk in the fridge so i gave her a bottle and put her to bed. dh and i switched spots as suggested.

of course, she slept through the night and now i can't figure out if it's because of the extra bottle or being next to dh instead of me.

i'm thinking that it was the bottle. she has been a lazy nurser from the start and will gladly take a bottle if offered. i'm thinking that she's getting used to the bottles during the day and has been too tired and frustrated at the end of the day (plus i've got less milk in the evening hours) to eat big enough meals to keep her full all night. i'm going to make a concerted effort to get some very good nursing sessions in at night and see how that goes.
i'm willing to nurse at night, but i was *really* enjoying those 8 hour stretches