I did a search for nightweaning and read a bunch but I just wondered if there's any advice in my situation... My daughter is 20 months old in a couple days and I'm 19 weeks pregnant. My milk dried up (either complety or mostly, I can't tell) about 5 weeks ago. After the crazy pain of early pregnancy ended, I'm fine with continuing to dry nurse if she needs it. She has always loved nursing, and bfs about 3-5 times a night. Lately she will often nurse for 2 minutes and then let go on her own, but there are still multiple times a night she wants to just keep my breast in her mouth. The problem is that I can't sleep anymore while she nurses, and then it wakes me up and I can't fall back asleep. I've been awake for hours at night about 3 times a week for a few months now, and I'm exhausted. Plus I know we need to make changes because I can't nurse two babies all night.
I feel terrible, even questioning whether it was the right thing to have another baby, because of how I can see this is affecting her. One way I could tell I'd lost my milk was that she has started screeching (this really high pitched scream--she's never been quiet about her wants but this is a whole new level) during the day whenever she's stressed. Another mom commented how loud she is the other day, when I was really struggling to feel patient myself, and I had to excuse myself because I had to hold back crying. I'm sharing all this as a way of explaining that I know she's not ready, which is why I feel so bad, but I can't make my milk come back either. She's definitely losing some interest in day nursing even though I offer as a way to calm her whenever I can.
We just set up a day bed pushed up next to ours to give her her own space. She wakes up and asks for water at night, which of course I always give her. She's done this for a couple of months I think. I'm ready to officially nightwean because we all need sleep. I can't be up for hours like this (like right now!). My husband isn't sleeping enough and we had this whole conversation about how he's ready for her to move to her own room--but I think the real problem is that lately she's not just waking up, shuffling around, and nursing back to sleep, but she wakes up and screams that high pitched screech multiple times a night and isn't always even happy when I give her my breast anyway. Sometimes that makes her scream more for a minute until she will lay down to nurse. When my husband tries to calm her by putting his hand on her or anything, she screeches and pushes him away. So I think he's willing to help, but I'm not sure if that is better or worse.
Sorry for how long this is. Maybe I just needed to get some of that out. I already feel a little better and more optimistic. Maybe now I can go back to sleep.
We'll get through it. Tomorrow I'm planning on starting with the 'mama's breasts are asleep. No nummies now' routine. We'll see how it goes...
I feel terrible, even questioning whether it was the right thing to have another baby, because of how I can see this is affecting her. One way I could tell I'd lost my milk was that she has started screeching (this really high pitched scream--she's never been quiet about her wants but this is a whole new level) during the day whenever she's stressed. Another mom commented how loud she is the other day, when I was really struggling to feel patient myself, and I had to excuse myself because I had to hold back crying. I'm sharing all this as a way of explaining that I know she's not ready, which is why I feel so bad, but I can't make my milk come back either. She's definitely losing some interest in day nursing even though I offer as a way to calm her whenever I can.
We just set up a day bed pushed up next to ours to give her her own space. She wakes up and asks for water at night, which of course I always give her. She's done this for a couple of months I think. I'm ready to officially nightwean because we all need sleep. I can't be up for hours like this (like right now!). My husband isn't sleeping enough and we had this whole conversation about how he's ready for her to move to her own room--but I think the real problem is that lately she's not just waking up, shuffling around, and nursing back to sleep, but she wakes up and screams that high pitched screech multiple times a night and isn't always even happy when I give her my breast anyway. Sometimes that makes her scream more for a minute until she will lay down to nurse. When my husband tries to calm her by putting his hand on her or anything, she screeches and pushes him away. So I think he's willing to help, but I'm not sure if that is better or worse.
Sorry for how long this is. Maybe I just needed to get some of that out. I already feel a little better and more optimistic. Maybe now I can go back to sleep.
We'll get through it. Tomorrow I'm planning on starting with the 'mama's breasts are asleep. No nummies now' routine. We'll see how it goes...
I went through the same thing. My little guy has been dry nursing for months and what worked for me was to make sure he was well fed before bed, give him water and then tell him that "the milkies are asleep". I still nurse him to sleep in the beginning of the night for a few minutes then stop for the night until it starts to get light, around 6-6:30 a.m. Then I'll let him have a longer session and his suck isn't as strong so I can get back to sleep too. The only problem I'm going to have with this is that I'll be due with a new baby like "any day now" after Saturday so I'm really trying to get him to stop the early morning session and just stay asleep. It was as good as it got just to have him not wake me up 3x a night to nurse so I totally feel you. Maybe if you start the "milkies are asleep" it will work for you. It wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I always thought that we were going to battle it out in the night for my breasts or something and that hasn't happened. So good luck to you on this one. I hope that things work out for you soon.
