We've started nightweaning- questions ,support please

[penstamon]

Actually for a long time now I have been working with DS to pull him off the breast at night and he will roll over and go to sleep on his own.  I had also been slowly cutting down on feeds until he only ate 2x until morning, then 1x this past week, and now 2 nights of nothing before 5 or 6am.  The thing is he doesn't seem to mind not nursing too much but he still wakes 5-6x a night (up from 3-4x a month ago) and although most times I can pat/rub/shush him back to sleep within 10 min, there are usually or 1 or 2 wakings that take 1/2-1 hour to settle.  When I would nurse during these he still would not settle.

We give him an extra snack before bed and he is not eating any extra in the morning so I feel the NW isn't too rough calorie-wise.  My milk supply was lessening as I am pg anyway.  But the wakings continue and even seem worse!  All night, every night!   He is on his own full size mattress in the next room instead of the side-carred crib so we are not waking him up with our noises at night.  But the first sleep stretch has diminished to 3 hours max instead of 5-6 and then he is up every 30 min. to an hour until morning as I lay in his bed and pat him down over and over again.

Is there a light at the end of this tunnel????

[Halfasianmomma]

Yes there is!

My nightweaning journey lasted about 3 weeks, and after the first stretch, things go immensely worse. DD would have fits of rage that I was refusing to nurse her. She'd grab at me and cry. When she wasn't doing that, she was just awake, keeping me awake as well.

I just stubbornly kept on track. I kept a clock near my bed so I could actually see how long she'd been awake and how long she'd slept. My sleep deprived brain thought she was awake all night, but it turned out to "only" be 90 minutes. I continued to wear turtlenecks to bed, used the same techniques but tried to vary them night by night (back rubbing, shushing, patting, singing, offering water). For the early morning wakings, i offered her a saltine cracker and a sippy of juice. She'd chow down on that and then give me another hour of sleep before being up for the day.

You're doing good! Keep at it!

[beebalmmama]

How long has he been in his own room? Did you start the weaning after he moved or did you do it all at once. My initial thought is that maybe doing the two at the same time might have been too much. Do you think he seems unsettled about you not being in the room when he wakes up? If he's been in his own room for awhile then disregard this suggestion.

With ds 1 (18 months at the time) we had him on a different sleep surface in our room and I would lay down next to him to nurse. We ended up then getting a twin mattress and pushing it up to our bed and gradually started moving it away from ours, until it was on the other side of the room (only a 10X10 room anyway). I don't remember if he was totally nightweaned before moving the bed away or not. But anyway we ended up moving him to his own room once he was no longer waking at night asking for "nursies".

Dh's help during the whole nightweaning process was HUGE for me. It was too difficult to tell ds he couldn't have a nursie when I was right there. So dh pretty much became the nighttime parent at that point for a while.

[penstamon]

Yes, I would love it if DH could take over but the sleep deprivation has become too much for him- he works a strenuous job, has been sick a lot, and is not coping well.  He agreed to take DS on the weekends and once he starts to recover.

We did kind of move him to his new room and continue to NW all at once.  However I am sleeping next to him in his room after the first wake up for the rest of the night.  He loves his bed during the day and takes long, fantastic naps on it (longer stretches than at night).  We just don't have room for the extra full bed in our room and no one was getting any sleep that way- DH snores, we make noise coming to bed, comforter rustles- this all would wake DS.

I am really hoping this will get better with time!

[JuliMummy]

My son, even though he didn't feed during the night from about 11 months, still woke several times during the night for a long time after weaning. He would sleep in his cot in his own room for the first few hours of the night and then wake up screaming until we took him into our bed. We moved him into a toddler bed when he was about 18 months in his own room. This improved things quite a lot, but I still had to sit next to his bed for a while a few times a night. He would wake up and cry, but would be happy to go back to sleep as long as I was there sitting next to his bed. Over a few months it got less and less and after a while he was happy to be tucked back in and go back to sleep without me having to sit next to his bed. 

It was extremely exhausting doing this while being pregnant, and I often found myself drifting off to sleep while sitting next to his bed, but he got there eventually. He was sick a lot between 18 months and 2 years, which didn't help. But by the time he was 2, he was sleeping through most nights (meaning of course, he woke up but was happy to go back to sleep without me being there.), which was a blessing as our daughter was born then and she's been a terrible sleeper right from the start.

So  I know how tired you must be feeling, being pregnant and being woken up so much. I wonder whether you will just have to keep doing what you're doing and maybe try to slowly move away from him during the night. So maybe you could try sitting next to his bed rather than lying with him. I know that makes it more exhausting because you can't go to sleep, but it might be the necessary next step. And when he's happy with that you could try resettling him and then telling him that you'll just be in your bedroom or the kitchen or wherever if it's before you go to bed, and that you'll come if he needs you, or something to that effect and see if he's happy with that. He might not be for a while, in which case you might have to wait and try again later.

My son got to the point where he would tell me to go away so he could go to sleep during the night, if I went in to check on him  

Now all we have to do is get my daughter to the same point and I'll be happy....

Good luck to you