to wean or not to wean....

[queen b]

15 month old ds NEVER sleeps! he goes down at 7:30 wakes up at 9 and then insists on being attached to my nipple from that point on. he tosses and turns all night, nurses on one side and then tweaks the opposite nipple with his fingers. i can't even put the covers on me because he doesn't like them and so on top of it all, i am freezing! i'm starting to resent him and i have almost fallen asleep while driving on several occasions. i nursed my daughter around the clock until she was 2.5 and i feel so badly not doing for ds what i did for dd. part of me thinks i should tough it out, but the other part of me is going insane! i don't want to let him cio because i think it's wrong and he is also a very sensitive little guy as is. what is a mama to do? i was thinking about having dh just rock him and rub his back. maybe take dd and i to a hotel for a few nights so i don't have to endure the crying. i'm losing my mind here---any advice would be great!


thanks!

[EzzysMom]

Oh gosh yeah I think some limits are not unreasonable. You should not be in pain or freezing, that's just not cool. I would use a nursing tank plus a pj top over on top of it to just barely expose one boob while staying warm, can you try that? Then he doesn't have to have covers on him too.

Have you read the no-cry sleep solution for some ideas? I would give him something else to twiddle, tell him he may not do it to you but he can do it to something else. Just keep moving his hands.

When he starts to fall asleep pop him off and roll away. He protests, you nurse some more, then pop off, rinse repeat. It is not safe for any of you to fall asleep driving. It is not unreasonable for you to have some needs and at 15 months it's time for you to give some gentle limits so that you can function too.

All of this stuff at first obviously means worse sleep to start with though, so that's a tough one too. If you think he'd take well to DH I don't see a problem with that route too, although all night cold-turkey night weaning is pretty rough.

ETA: even though he is really young still, i'd talk about this during the day first (the new limits) so he might start to understand

[queen b]

thanks for the advice! i am going to night wean him starting tonight. dh is going to hold him and rock him skin to skin and i am going to sleep downstairs. i know it's going to be tough on us all, but happy mom=happy babe i am going to try to at least cut out the bulk of the night nursing. i will probably cave somewhere after 3:00am. any suggestions are still welcomed!

[katiesk]

what is working for us is my nursing dd to sleep and then "milk" goes to sleep as well...so if she wakes in the night, she can have some water out of a baby bottle, but no more milk until morning. If she wakes up at 6 or after, I tell her the milk is awake and she often nurses back to sleep for a while longer. Once it's really morning, I let her nurse as much as she likes. There were many tears the first few nights...very sad and hard not to cave in, but since then she sleeps much better and instead of waking 4 or 5 times to nurse and then trying to stay latched on all night, she wakes up once or twice for a sip of water and goes back to sleep snuggling, or I rub her back or something. At first we talked about it alot during the day and now I still remind her at bedtime that she can nurse to sleep but then only water until morning.

The twiddling thing...dd still tries this all the time. It drives me increasingly crazy. I just remind her firmly (i get pretty annoyed by it too, so i'm sure i don't sound too friendly about it) not to do it.

having your dp take over a bit would be probably be really helpful too - at least you could get some real rest!

[kdescalzi]

Katiesk,

How did you convince your lo that milk went to bed? My dd is the same age as the op and I have the same problem. I threaten to night wean every night but then I chicken out. I don't want to stop night nursing all together, but would love to teach her to sleep without my nipple being in her mouth all night long. please explain how you did this!!!

[katiesk]

she is 2 and a half now and fairly reasonable so i think she gets it in a way that "motches" (what she calls boobs, milk, the whole process - don't ask me why) rest too. we started this about 3 months ago... and it took me a long time to decide to do it because i knew that i would chicken out if i wasnt really confident and dd did not seem really ready as i did not want to sabotage myself. although, if it had been really hard, i probably would have stopped. the most difficult part was dp getting soo frustrated at dd crying and begging to nurse in the middle of the night. that pretty much drove me crazy! the reason i was determined though, was because night time nursing was becoming really disruptive for me - dd was back and forth all night and nipple twiddling, etc...i had just slept through it in the past but that was not happening. also, i realized that she would be able to understand that she might not be able to nurse right this minute, but she could again in the morning. it was pretty smooth - a couple of nights of probably 10 minute sad, crying sprees, but then a drink of water and snuggling back to sleep. 10 minutes can feel like a million years though in the middle of the night...

[queen b]

thanks katiesk! good advice, though ds is a bit younger and doesn't fully grasp all we tell him. nonetheless i have been talking to him about it during the days and telling him what to expect. the first night i went out dancing till 1am so that i could be away from the situation. dh snuggled him skin to skin and rocked him and when i got home ds was still crying in dh's arms. i tried to ignore it for about 30 minutes and i couldn't! i brought him to be with me and he nursed all night. it felt so wrong to have him be that upset even if he was being comforted. we tried again last night and ds did better. again i brought him in bed with me at about 2am. maybe if we can get him to sleep until 2:00 that would be a great improvement! we'll see what tonight brings! i think ds is basically calling my bluff with this night weaning business. my heart is too soft!

[Ravenlunatic]

I feel for you mama, it can be so incredibly difficult (or impossible) to fight the fight when it comes to your instincts vs your sanity here.

I have a 6 yr old dd that I night weaned first around 19 months (only nursing once or twice during a 10 hour sleep), and then at @ then finally around 3 years old I weaned her to no nursing at all during bedtime. I would constantly go back and forth with the heavy nursing to light nursing depending on how other parts of life where going. It was not an easy path.

In hind sight I think I made the right move by night weaning her at the appropriate time, but then when I went back on it during a 'difficult' time I sabataged my efforts. The difficult time being when I thought my dd needed to nurse more for this reason or that.

Anyway, after having my experience and watching as my relatives and friends deal with the same issue I have come to the conclusion that it is better for everyone involved if YOU make the night weaning choice based on YOUR needs.

Ah, selfish I know, but unless your little one has a medical need for you to nurse him constantly through the night, I would night wean him and stick to it. Maybe you could choose a semi-wean (which complicates things) to only nursing him once or twice during the night ( or the famed only nursing him after say 5 am even if that means he is attached to you for 4 hours straight). Either way (to semi wean or fully wean) you need to stick to your guns. That is my humble opinion anyway.

[ssh]

Originally Posted by queen b

thanks for the advice! i am going to night wean him starting tonight. dh is going to hold him and rock him skin to skin and i am going to sleep downstairs. i know it's going to be tough on us all, but happy mom=happy babe i am going to try to at least cut out the bulk of the night nursing. i will probably cave somewhere after 3:00am. any suggestions are still welcomed!

We never really night weaned until DD just did it herself around 2.5 for the most part. But I did take my nipple out of her mouth as soon as she was asleep and then roll over and sleep. The only times it wouldn't work was when she was having a lot of teething pain. Ibuprofen helped then. I think we would have gotten less sleep if we'd tried to night wean. Putting a twin next to our queen bed and giving everyone more room helped us all sleep more too. How many total hours is he sleeping? DD had a lot of trouble staying asleep if she went to bed too early.

[ssh]

Originally Posted by queen b

thanks katiesk! good advice, though ds is a bit younger and doesn't fully grasp all we tell him. nonetheless i have been talking to him about it during the days and telling him what to expect. the first night i went out dancing till 1am so that i could be away from the situation. dh snuggled him skin to skin and rocked him and when i got home ds was still crying in dh's arms. i tried to ignore it for about 30 minutes and i couldn't! i brought him to be with me and he nursed all night. it felt so wrong to have him be that upset even if he was being comforted. we tried again last night and ds did better. again i brought him in bed with me at about 2am. maybe if we can get him to sleep until 2:00 that would be a great improvement! we'll see what tonight brings! i think ds is basically calling my bluff with this night weaning business. my heart is too soft!

Your heart isn't too soft, he's still really little. He probably nursed all night because he was panicked by the change.