Seriously thinking about weaning...what do I need to know?

[bean-e]

Hi mamas,

I am seriously thinking about weaning my 16 month old. Having always to watch what I eat, not be able to eat what I want/need, and not sleeping well is just taking too much of a toll on my. I know many of you have done it for many years, but I cannot last much longer. Given that, what do you think I need to consider and plan out before weaning her?

She currently nurses 4 times a day but would do more if she could. She seems to really need to nurse in the middle of the night. I suspect she, like me, gets hungry in the middle of the night even though we had enough food during the day. Do I need to think about substitutes? I don't know if there are any for her. She seems to react to coconut milk, rice milk (can't do brown rice), used to get sour breath when I had nuts so I haven't tried any nuts, and legumes seem to cause acid reflux. Will she have trouble getting all the vitamins and minerals she needs if we weaned?

thoughts? questions? suggestions?

thank you.

Vivian

[changingseasons]

I hate to tell you this, but if she's having food reactions still, she's probably waking up in pain and that's why she needs to nurse frequently (both day and night.)

Is it you that isn't sleeping well? Because she's nursing? Do you co-sleep? I don't want to sound discouraging, but I can guarantee you that weaning before she's ready is NOT going to let you get more sleep, at least not for a while. You could always try night-weaning to see if she's ready for it. If she's just comfort nursing during the night, she might do ok. But if she's genuinely hungry, or in pain, weaning will probably just make her wake up more often.

Also, if you're concerned about vitamin/minerals, I would suggest you try her on a good multi-vitamin BEFORE you wean, to make sure she tolerates it. I don't know what all her allergens are, but all multi-vitamins have corn and usually soy in them. Some kids are ok with those when they are highly processed, some are not.

Do you need meal ideas to help you feel better about your restricted diet?

[mamafish9]

I'm with CS, I'd work on getting her good supps, and more food sources, before you wean.

My DS nursed every couple of hours all night long until he was 3. When we started some pancreatic & digestive supports, he weaned (astonishingly easily) in 6 weeks - from nursing 10-15x a day. So he woke up hungry and with crashing blood sugar in the night, and because he wasn't digesting protein well.

What can your daughter currently eat?

[bean-e]

I think should clarify myself a bit. She nurses 3 times a day (before her two naps and before bed), and she is allowed to nurse once in the middle of the night. The problem with night time is that sometimes she sleeps well until about 4 am but sometimes it's only until midnight. And she will pretty much keep on waking up every 2 hours and ask for milk after she has woken up once.

We have tried weaning at night, but I don't think we ever managed to get pass 5am. I am usually quite hungry by 3 or 4 am if I am awake to notice. Could it just be some family high metabolism thing or do you think we both have crashing blood sugar?

How do I know whether or nor she is digesting protein well or digesting well at all?

I have got her on Brainchild multi mineral. She is still on a very low dose...1.25 ml. We are slowly increasing it. I thought I would work on increasing this one before adding the multivitamin because it sounds like not everyone is supportive of multivitamins the last time I asked.

Currently, she can have:
meats:
chicken, duck and lamb.

fruits:
banana, all citrus fruits, ya pear, blueberries, cranberries, raisins, all grapes

veggies:
most leafy veggies seem to be fine, broccoli, zucchini, butternut squash, and potato.
she loves avocado and does not seem to feel uncomfortable afterwards, but has loose stool from them

grains:
white rice and millet

And like I said, no nuts or legumes yet. We tried lentils and had acid reflux. When dh and I have fish, we give her small bites. She ends up with really bad breath and will get spots on her bum if she has too much.

All in all, it's not a very restricted list of foods, but not as varied as I would like. What are your thoughts now?

mamafish, what did you give your ds for digestive support? I know you have him on loads of supplements. Is it just holistic health's special digestive enzymes or is there more?

[changingseasons]

Originally Posted by bean-e

I think should clarify myself a bit. She nurses 3 times a day (before her two naps and before bed), and she is allowed to nurse once in the middle of the night. The problem with night time is that sometimes she sleeps well until about 4 am but sometimes it's only until midnight. And she will pretty much keep on waking up every 2 hours and ask for milk after she has woken up once.

So do you have a plan in place to feed her during the night if you think she's genuinely hungry? I guess my point is that if she's really hungry, and you wean, she's just going to wake up more often, which seems like it would make the problem worse for you.

[mamafish9]

We did a pee test to see if he was digesting proteins - it's not cheap, so I'd try some supps/enzymes first.

It looks like she has a pretty varied diet - what fat sources does she eat plenty of?

I'd get the brainchild minerals up, add in some mthf folate as a bare minimum before weaning - what other supps are you taking she might be getting through bm?

For the blood sugar stuff, what seems to have worked for us:

1) Yasko enzymes for 6 months to get his digestion working and his amino acid levels back up - we also worked intensively on methylation during this time

2) now we do a fat appetizer 15 minutes before we eat, to trigger CCK release, which releases his own bile & pancreatic enzymes

3) food every 2-3 hours. Particularly in the evening - big dinner at 5, and then basically again at 7:30. If either of those he doesn't eat enough, we get night waking.

4) a little protein with every meal, not a lot with any one meal

5) sugar always needs to get eaten along with protein (ideally) or fat - this helps slow the sugar absorption and the resulting spikes and valleys in blood sugar. sugar in this case includes fruits, juice, anything naturally sweet.

[bean-e]

Originally Posted by changingseasons

So do you have a plan in place to feed her during the night if you think she's genuinely hungry? I guess my point is that if she's really hungry, and you wean, she's just going to wake up more often, which seems like it would make the problem worse for you.

This might sound horrible to you, but I am expecting her to learn to sleep through it. I have trouble understanding why other children her age can sleep through the whole night without eating, but not her. She has a healthy amount of body fat on her. 25 lb ish for a 16 month old is pretty healthy.

Originally Posted by mamafish9

It looks like she has a pretty varied diet - what fat sources does she eat plenty of?

Mostly fats from her meats, some olive oil and some grapeseed oil.

I'd get the brainchild minerals up, add in some mthf folate as a bare minimum before weaning - what other supps are you taking she might be getting through bm?

I take a multi v from new chapter. multi min, iron, hydroxy b12, zinc, lots of vit c, and fermented CLO.

For the blood sugar stuff, what seems to have worked for us:

1) Yasko enzymes for 6 months to get his digestion working and his amino acid levels back up - we also worked intensively on methylation during this time

what did you do for methylation?

2) now we do a fat appetizer 15 minutes before we eat, to trigger CCK release, which releases his own bile & pancreatic enzymes

can you give me some examples of fat appetizer?

3) food every 2-3 hours. Particularly in the evening - big dinner at 5, and then basically again at 7:30. If either of those he doesn't eat enough, we get night waking.

I don't think she needs as much as your boy b/c if I bf her once at 5 ish (sometimes she wants it when I come home from work) then she can't eat her whole dinner at 6:30. But stuffing her does make a slight difference.

4) a little protein with every meal, not a lot with any one meal

Can you define what a little protein mean?

5) sugar always needs to get eaten along with protein (ideally) or fat - this helps slow the sugar absorption and the resulting spikes and valleys in blood sugar. sugar in this case includes fruits, juice, anything naturally sweet.

What other protein or fat sources would you suggest? I tried egg yolk and she became so energetic that night that she barely slept. She just wanted to play all night.

[mamafish9]

Originally Posted by bean-e

This might sound horrible to you, but I am expecting her to learn to sleep through it. I have trouble understanding why other children her age can sleep through the whole night without eating, but not her. She has a healthy amount of body fat on her. 25 lb ish for a 16 month old is pretty healthy.

My son is 35lbs, plenty big - the blood sugar and protein digestion stuff doesn't mean they need to be small. It was very obvious to me after supporting my son's digestion and pancreatic stuff that he had some different reasons driving his night waking than most kids. She may well learn to sleep through it - or you may have a child who wakes up unhappy and won't go back to sleep (that still happens here when we've messed up his supports that day).

For your other comments - I'd look to increase her fat sources if you can. Can she do coconut milk/oil? Breastmilk is a great, highly digestible form of fat that is hard to replicate, especially for kids with possible digestion issues.

She's getting a lot of vites & minerals from you, so I'd try to replace at least some of those. (A, D, K2, B's in small quantities if you can, C).

Methylation support is a whole 'nother thread, but B12 and folates are a good start.

We do raw cream as our fat appetizer (mixed with a little yogurt). Butter works, pine nut oil, coconut oil.

For us the key isn't stuffing him, it's filling him up decently several times before bed (doing it just once doesn't seem to be enough).

A little protein means 3-5g. Occasionally less.

Fascinating that egg gave her energy. Eggs are highly digestible protein, so it may be that she was reacting, or it may be that she would really benefit. Did you try egg in the morning?

[changingseasons]

Originally Posted by bean-e

This might sound horrible to you, but I am expecting her to learn to sleep through it. I have trouble understanding why other children her age can sleep through the whole night without eating, but not her. She has a healthy amount of body fat on her. 25 lb ish for a 16 month old is pretty healthy.

Fat does not necessarily equal healthy. And if you look around the threads in this forum, you'll find a LOT (if not all) kids that have food allergies/intolerances have sleeping problems until the food issues are resolved. It took us more than 2 years to get enough of DD's food triggers out of her diet before she would sleep through the night. Before that, she was waking up every couple hours- at her worst reactions, it was every 20 minutes. And even now, if she eats something that doesn't agree with her, she will be tossing and turning all night, waking up every couple hours.

Sleep issues *can* be a symptom. This isn't necessarily always the case, but it's something you need to consider. I'm sure she's not waking you up all night just because she's stubborn and selfish. She's only 16 months old!!!! She's most likely waking up because her body is sending her a message- that she's hungry, that she's uncomfortable, something. I can guarantee you that "all those other children her age" don't sleep through the night when they're sick, which is the same as a child having a food reaction.

IF (and that's a big IF, because I don't know your situation and your DD's allergies and symptoms) she is waking up because she is uncomfortable/in pain/hungry and you just let her "sleep through it" (which I'm assuming means CIO), that is just about the worst thing you can do, imho.

IF this is an allergy/intolerance related symptom, by figuring out her triggers and removing them from her diet, I can almost definitely assure you that she will sleep better. Again, I don't know your specifics, so this might not apply to your situation at all. But I would hate to think of the possibility of a baby crying out at night because they are in pain, and their mother just wants them to suck it up and sleep through it.

[bean-e]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

For your other comments - I'd look to increase her fat sources if you can. Can she do coconut milk/oil? Breastmilk is a great, highly digestible form of fat that is hard to replicate, especially for kids with possible digestion issues.

She can't do coconut milk. I haven't tried oil, but chances are quite slim.

Fascinating that egg gave her energy. Eggs are highly digestible protein, so it may be that she was reacting, or it may be that she would really benefit. Did you try egg in the morning?

I believe we did give it to her in the morning. At the latest, it would have been early afternoon. I tend not to try anything at night just in case it affects her sleep.

what brand of folate would you suggest?

Originally Posted by changingseasons

Fat does not necessarily equal healthy. And if you look around the threads in this forum, you'll find a LOT (if not all) kids that have food allergies/intolerances have sleeping problems until the food issues are resolved. It took us more than 2 years to get enough of DD's food triggers out of her diet before she would sleep through the night. Before that, she was waking up every couple hours- at her worst reactions, it was every 20 minutes. And even now, if she eats something that doesn't agree with her, she will be tossing and turning all night, waking up every couple hours.

I am sure that there isn't any foods in her diet at this point that is causing issues. She has been on this diet for a while now and she has slept well on other days. It's just been awful lately.

Sleep issues *can* be a symptom. This isn't necessarily always the case, but it's something you need to consider. I'm sure she's not waking you up all night just because she's stubborn and selfish. She's only 16 months old!!!!

I never implied that she is selfish, but stubborn she is. She has plenty of personality that started showing right from the beginning.


IF (and that's a big IF, because I don't know your situation and your DD's allergies and symptoms) she is waking up because she is uncomfortable/in pain/hungry and you just let her "sleep through it" (which I'm assuming means CIO), that is just about the worst thing you can do, imho.

Her bed is two feet away from ours so crying it out is not even an option if I am willing. She would just climb into our bed and fuss all night.

.

[changingseasons]

Originally Posted by bean-e

I am sure that there isn't any foods in her diet at this point that is causing issues. She has been on this diet for a while now and she has slept well on other days. It's just been awful lately.

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I never implied that she is selfish, but stubborn she is. She has plenty of personality that started showing right from the beginning.

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Her bed is two feet away from ours so crying it out is not even an option if I am willing. She would just climb into our bed and fuss all night.

If she is sleeping great some nights, but horribly other nights, why do you think that is? Are you keeping a food journal? She obviously has the ability to sleep through the night if she's doing it occasionally, so something must be waking her up on those nights that she sleeps bad.

Do you really think she's waking up at night because she's stubborn? You think she's doing it on purpose?

So I'm really curious- if you're not going to CIO, how are you going to get her to just sleep through it? Obviously if she *could* just sleep through the night, she'd be doing it, right? That's why I mentioned night-weaning in my first post- if you really think she's just waking up needing comfort or something, you could try night weaning. If she does ok with it, then great! Maybe it's not an issue of being uncomfortable at all. But the other option is that she won't do well with night-weaning, and then you get less sleep. But I think it's worth a try before cutting her off completely when she's so little.

[bean-e]

Originally Posted by changingseasons

If she is sleeping great some nights, but horribly other nights, why do you think that is? Are you keeping a food journal? She obviously has the ability to sleep through the night if she's doing it occasionally, so something must be waking her up on those nights that she sleeps bad.

Do you really think she's waking up at night because she's stubborn? You think she's doing it on purpose?

So I'm really curious- if you're not going to CIO, how are you going to get her to just sleep through it? Obviously if she *could* just sleep through the night, she'd be doing it, right? That's why I mentioned night-weaning in my first post- if you really think she's just waking up needing comfort or something, you could try night weaning. If she does ok with it, then great! Maybe it's not an issue of being uncomfortable at all. But the other option is that she won't do well with night-weaning, and then you get less sleep. But I think it's worth a try before cutting her off completely when she's so little.

When it's not an issue of food intolerance/allergy, then I think she sleeps more poorly on some night because she did not eat as much as she needed before bed. That means we did not keep on putting food in her mouth when she no longer seems interested.

And I did not say that she is waking up at night because she is stubborn. I simply said she is a stubborn child. To reframe, she is a very persistent little person.

I think she is waking up in the middle of the night because she is hungry. Like I said, I get hungry in the middle of the night even if I have a nice snack right before bed, so I would not be surprised if she does as well. And I want her to learn to sleep through the hunger. It might sound awful if you are only looking at that rather than the big picture. But it's a lot more awful to have a mother who cannot function and be emotionally present for her child because she has not been able to eat or sleep for a whole year. So if she can learn to sleep through some hunger for just a few hours a day but can have a mom who is physically and emotionally healthy and wants to spend time playing and doing fun things with her daughter, then I think it's an acceptabe balance. I want her to learn that mothering is about taking good care of the child(ren) as well as oneself rather thank just giving endlessly until there is nothing left; I am getting very close and that's why I am wanting to wean.

[mamafish9]

Originally Posted by bean-e

When it's not an issue of food intolerance/allergy, then I think she sleeps more poorly on some night because she did not eat as much as she needed before bed. That means we did not keep on putting food in her mouth when she no longer seems interested.

And I did not say that she is waking up at night because she is stubborn. I simply said she is a stubborn child. To reframe, she is a very persistent little person.

I think she is waking up in the middle of the night because she is hungry. Like I said, I get hungry in the middle of the night even if I have a nice snack right before bed, so I would not be surprised if she does as well. And I want her to learn to sleep through the hunger. It might sound awful if you are only looking at that rather than the big picture. But it's a lot more awful to have a mother who cannot function and be emotionally present for her child because she has not been able to eat or sleep for a whole year. So if she can learn to sleep through some hunger for just a few hours a day but can have a mom who is physically and emotionally healthy and wants to spend time playing and doing fun things with her daughter, then I think it's an acceptabe balance. I want her to learn that mothering is about taking good care of the child(ren) as well as oneself rather thank just giving endlessly until there is nothing left; I am getting very close and that's why I am wanting to wean.

Well, I think you might have a good experiment in yourself. Waking up hungry at 4am is not normal, and neither is feeling really hungry at 4am if you happen to wake up. If you figure out what strategies help out with that for you, then perhaps you will have some clues to help your daughter too.

In my house, my DS was waking hungry, and not feeding him simply results in him choosing to manage his hunger by playing through it - he can't sleep hungry, but he can happily play for hours at 2am . And trust me, waking up to nurse once is very in its impact on my ability to parent compared to being up for 3-4 hours at 2am.

fwiw, I do keep putting food in my son's mouth until he refuses (vs. isn't interested enough to feed himself), at dinner and at bedtime. It's worth it, that is what gets me a good night's sleep most nights now.

Also, if her main fat source is meat, does she get some every meal and before bed? No fat and no protein definitely will cause blood sugar mess and night waking in our house.

It might be worth tracking amount of food and fat/protein content and track that against her night waking, and see if you can see some patterns for what works best. Figuring that out before you wean might decrease the sleep impact quite a bit.

[changingseasons]

Originally Posted by bean-e

It might sound awful if you are only looking at that rather than the big picture. But it's a lot more awful to have a mother who cannot function and be emotionally present for her child because she has not been able to eat or sleep for a whole year. So if she can learn to sleep through some hunger for just a few hours a day but can have a mom who is physically and emotionally healthy and wants to spend time playing and doing fun things with her daughter, then I think it's an acceptabe balance. I want her to learn that mothering is about taking good care of the child(ren) as well as oneself rather thank just giving endlessly until there is nothing left; I am getting very close and that's why I am wanting to wean.

I absolutely agree. Your must stay healthy to keep her healthy! Just keep in mind that it doesn't have to be all or nothing. If you could just night-wean, it would (hopefully) give you the extra sleep you need so that you can focus on other issues during the day.

You first post made it sound like it was more of an inconvenience to you (because you couldn't "eat what you want"), which is why perhaps some of my posts haven't been as sympathetic as they could have been. I can certainly understand being at the end of your rope though.

I just want to point out though, one more time, that weaning her might not give you the results you're looking for (more sleep specifically) and might actually add a lot of stress for both of you.

[bean-e]

Originally Posted by changingseasons

You first post made it sound like it was more of an inconvenience to you (because you couldn't "eat what you want"), which is why perhaps some of my posts haven't been as sympathetic as they could have been. I can certainly understand being at the end of your rope though.
.

Even if I was thinking of weaning because it's "inconvenient" it's still pretty good considering that I have been eliminating foods from my diet for over a year and taking the time to find out what I need to know and do before I simply cut her off.

The mamas on this forum are amazing. The amount of time, effort and energy that so many of you spend on figuring out your children's allergy and health issues is not the norm for most parents. I think, because of this, that it's easy to lose sight of what is doable for most people.

This also got me thinking about how the use of the word selfish is. We women have been taught to be so selfless that we confuse self care with selfish, and we do this to ourselves and other women. But I hardly ever hear the word selfish use on men, or to hear a man say I have to be selfish and do this for myself. It's sad.

Thank you ladies for your input. We will work hard on the upping supplements for now.