frequent night waking and nursing - cause or effect of bad sleep?

[JuliMummy]

Hi everyone,
I'd like to hear your experiences and opinions as to whether frequent night waking and night nursing is a cause for bad sleeping and self-perpetuating or whether it is just a symptom of bad sleep. My daughter is 14 months and has always been a terrible sleeper. She has never slept through and has always hated going to sleep. She still wakes up every hour or two and wants to nurse back to sleep. She was a little better a couple of months ago, but then we moved from Australia to the UK and she was sick almost constantly for four weeks, during which time she got used to nursing a lot more than before. Now she's all better and we're beginning to feel quite settled, but the sleeping is still horrible. I feel like we're back to square one.
What I'm wondering is: Would nightweaning help her sleep better or would it just mean that she would sleep just as badly and I will have lost my one means of getting her back to sleep without hours of screaming? What has your experience been?
Thanks in advance,
Juli

[doulawoman]

I just want to mention that frequent waking and nursing in dd ended up being "silent reflux" and we didn;t know it until now at 8 months...I know someone whose babe was 3 before the knew..it may be totally irrelevant but might be worth checking into, or allergies, or even chiropratic/crainiosacral in case something's outta alignment.

[3xMama]

By that age I'd expect most kids to be sleeping better than that even if they still woke a time or two to nurse. Every hour or so is very frequent. I'd look into other causes before I'd say nursing was the cause.

[sammymama]

Hiya,

There is another similar post going right now, titled something like 'bad sleep - more than teething or developmental', that just caught my eye. All the moms in there described a situation similar to yours (save for your experience with recent sickness), and identical to mine as well. My 14 mo DD shows no symptoms of allergies or reflux... I have been curious about looking into a craniosacral evaluation - but I do take comfort in so many people describing the same pattern for this age range in challenged sleepers - as well as the moms who say their babes had the same habits but eventually started sleeping through the night with no particular "intervention". So maybe we just have to wait it out a little longer, taking our babes for what they are (and can do/handle) along the way...? That is my current philosophy, FWIW. Sorry there is no actual advice here - but I do feel for you!! Good luck.

[Tattooed Hand]

I had craniosacral therapy done and it didn't really make a difference except that she stopped startling awake as much (she is a very light sleeper). So she started sleeping a bit more deeply, but still wakes. She rolls up into a sitting position almost immediately and acts like you are torturing her if you try to get her to lie down. The only that entices her is the prospect of nursing, so I think in my case at least, night weaning would be a disaster. For us it's a combination of never ending teething and one long developmental disruption to do with sitting, crawling, standing, walking. I nurse her back down just because it works.

[mamazee]

I nightweaned my dd when she was 2 years old, and she went from waking up every hour and a half to nurse all night to sleeping through the night immediately. So in our case I think it was the need to nurse, though I wouldn't have night weaned her unless she was ready regardless (ie unless it went without trauma, as it did.) But it is probably different for each child.

[JuliMummy]

Thanks everybody for your responses.

doulawoman - in hindsight, were there any symptoms that you realise now pointed to it being silent reflux? I've had people suggest before that it could be reflux, but there is just nothing else to suggest that it might be reflux.

sammymama and tattooed hand - Thank you both. Not that I'd wish it on anybody, but it's always nice to hear from people who know exactly what it's like. Tattooed hand - the way you describe it is exactly the way my little girl reacts if I try to put her back down without nursing, like I'm torturing her.

Mamazee - yours is the sort of experience that makes me think that maybe I'm suffering unnecessarily and if I nightwean her we'll all get a lot more sleep. But who knows. Was your daughter as bad as Tattooed Hand described when she would wake? Would you say she was much different at 2 than at say 14 months in her sleeping that meant you could nightwean her easily at that age but not before?

Having thought about it for a while, I'm tending towards not nightweaning her just yet. I don't think it would help her sleeping at this point. She just finds the whole sleeping thing too difficult and upsetting. I think I just have to wait it out. I also remembered that my son, who was also a bad sleeper, but nowhere near as bad as my daughter, was nightweaned quite easily around 11 months, but it didn't stop his night waking either. He got a lot better around 18 months and was sleeping really well at 2 (which was a blessing as that was when my daughter was born). So I've got high hopes that she will get better on her own in 6 months or so. I haven't gone insane with sleep deprivation yet, so I think I can last a few more months.

[mamazee]

She was colicky at 2 months, so really she hardly slept at all at that age. But she slept the same once the colic ended until I nightweaned her, which was waking up every hour and a half all night. I tried nightweaning her at 18 months and she wasn't ready. She cried and really still needed to nurse, so I just nursed her. I tried again at 24 months, and she wimpered briefly and went back to sleep, then did the same a few hours later. The next night she did that once, and from then on she was sleeping through the night. It was so easy I wished I'd tried again at maybe 20 or so months.

Different kids will be ready for nightweaning at different ages. IMO you can try it and if the baby isn't ready you'll know it because of how she'll respond. And then you can try a little later. Also, I've heard of cases where a mom tried to nightwean and the baby wasn't ready to nightwean but did reduce the number of wakings, and even that would be an improvement.

[Erin22]

My daughter woke up to nurse every 1 to 2 hours from the day she was born. We finally nightweaned a month ago, when she was 14 months old, and it is so so much better. We used the Jay Gordon method and it really only took 2 days before she started to sleep better. Now she wakes up once or twice and goes right back to sleep when I snuggle with her. Sometimes she asks to nurse and I just tell her that "neh" is sleeping. She seems to accept that and goes right back to sleep without fussing. When she wakes up around 6 I start to nurse her again. Another good thing about nightweaning is that she is actually eating much more during the day now instead of nursing all night.

It sounds like it would be worth trying nightweaning. You might be surprised by how quickly things turn around, like they did for us. I was so skeptical because she has always been such a bad sleeper so I was really amazed by how easy it was. On the other hand, if it is not working you can always go back to nursing at night.

Good luck!

[doulawoman]

[QUOTE=JuliMummy;15994796]Thanks everybody for your responses.

doulawoman - in hindsight, were there any symptoms that you realise now pointed to it being silent reflux? I've had people suggest before that it could be reflux, but there is just nothing else to suggest that it might be reflux.



in hindsight...it was like she wanted to sleep but couldn't...laying down became more of an issue and because she is so movement oriented we assumed she just wanted to sit/move....she would nurse to sleep, then turn back and nurse a second longer and do this over and over again like she couldn't settle. there are varying degrees of , it can be "silent"...she seemed very uncomfortable as a little baby...she loves icewater (must feel good on her burning throat) she woke a lot, and would nurse constantly (feels better going down than up) like i said, that may not be it, but if nothing else works you could check it out, there are varying degrees. you could try elevating he head of the bed. hth, hope something works for you. my advice is try the simple solutions first but if you have a feeling mre is going on, don't ignore it

[beebalmmama]

My first son was like that. But he was probably giving me two hour stretches between nursing at that time. Finally at 18 months I gently nightweaned. It didn't take too long, a week or so of dad stepping in to help. But he actually did start sleeping through the night or only waking once and easily going back to sleep. I felt more comfortable nightweaning him when he could understand that "mama was asleep" and "nursies were night night" etc.