How to night wean a cosleeping toddler?

[mcgee]

Our son is 13.5 months old, and he's coslept from the beginning. I usually nurse him down for the night, and DH puts him in his crib in our room. He would then wake a few hours later, nurse in bed with us, and then he'd sleep until about 6 am, nurse briefly again and then go back to sleep.

For the last couple of months though, he's getting harder and harder to nurse to sleep. For about an hour before bedtime, despite showing clear signs of being tired, he fights sleep like crazy. He wants to nurse for a few minutes and then get up and run around, and he'll do this a half dozen times or so. Then once he is asleep, he'll often wake up as soon as someone tries to lay him down.

When we FINALLY get him in bed, he'll wake up again and want to nurse around midnight, as usual, but then he wants to nurse every half hour or hour for the rest of the night. In between these frequent nursing sessions, he flails about in his sleep, and I usually wake up when he kicks me. Several months ago he even broke my nose when he slammed his head into my face while he was asleep.

Add to this, he absolutely refuses to nurse on the right side. He will ONLY nurse from the left breast, so after constant nightly nursing sessions, I'm pretty sore.

I desperately want to be able to put him to bed without the 1-2 hour nurse/play/cry routine. I desperately want to sleep more than an hour or so at a time. My husband does not like the idea of CIO, mainly because CIO means that HE doesn't get much sleep because our son is crying. If I'm nursing all night, DH is able to sleep, so he doesn't really see the problem.

I am not opposed to continuing the cosleeping, although I'd rather have DS asleep in his crib in our room instead of in the bed with us because of how much he moves around at night. I'm beginning to think night-weaning is the best option for us, but I'm not sure how to do it without lengthy periods of CIO.

Does anyone have any suggestions??? I'm at my wits' end.

[cyclamen]

I think that for us the nursing struggle to go to bed was a clear sign to develop a new routine.  We began doing "bath, book, bed" around that age.  At first I nursed DD between bath and book, and after a month we dropped it all together.  If she's feeling sick or teething, I will nurse her. But DP had to do the actual "bed" part without me in the room.  Yes, there were some tears at first, but it's not CIO if someone's there to comfort.

Now, several months later, I can put her to bed without nursing.

If she wakes in the middle of the night DP usually can get her back to sleep with a sip of water.  I usually either rock her or pat her back.  I limit nursing and now that she is 18 mo and communicate we talk about it a little bit.  I've actually been sleeping out of the room for a few days, at first because I was sick, but then because we realized she was STTN.  we only have one bedroom, so hopefully I won't be relegated to the couch forever!

It sounds like you need some night time support from your DH, mama.

Edited by cyclamen - 12/23/10 at 10:29pm

[snadaska]

Is your son teething right now?

What size bed do you have? 

Those are some questions that popped in my head while reading your post. I cosleep with my 16 month old DD and we have had many ups and downs with sleep. There was a time when things were so bad. I was soooo sleep deprived and miserable. I thought about putting her in her room and doing CIO but I didn;t and somehow it worked itself out.  

In our case the things that made a difference were teething. WHen she was teething (esp getting in the molars) her sleep was terrible. Once her molars came in things were much better.  Also, a key thing for us was having enough space in bed.  We have a queen, which I know is fine for a lot of people, but for us to be comfortable we need our space. I actually find that if I am too close to my daughter I wake her up. Our solution was to put our mattress on the floor (not the best looking option but functional)  and then put DDs crib mattress right next to our mattress. She usually falls asleep on our bed and then I just move her to her mattress. I used not be able to move her as she would wake easily so I would nurse her on her mattress and then once she was asleep I moved into my own bed.  This has helped so much.  I think not being directly next to me has made her wake up less and nurse less.  Shes nightweaned now but we still have some times when she wakes up 1-3 x a night. 

I really do think that age also has a lot to do with where kids are at sleepwise as far as STTN.  As my daughter has gotten older her sleep has gotten better. In some ways it seems like this just happened on its own without me doing much of anything.I think it has just taken longer than for kids whose parents do CIO.  This is a long winded way of saying that things will improve. It is hard to say when, unfortunately, but I do believe things will get better. Hang in there mama  :)

[mcgee]

Yes, he's teething. He has two molars that have already come in on the bottom, and he had a cuspid/canine tooth break through on top recently. We have a queen-sized bed. I'd love to upgrade to a king, but it's not remotely in the budget right now. Ditching the bedframe, headboard, footboard, and box springs and putting the mattress on the floor is not a realistic option for us.

We rearranged his room yesterday and added a bunch of shelves for toy and book storage (safely mounted to the wall, of course). As we finished the room today, we assembled our daughter's old toddler bed and put his crib mattress on it. We talked to him about how it was his bed, we showed him how to safely get down off the mattress, we spent some time in the room with the lights off and the night light on. My husband rocked him to sleep while I was out for a run, so he went to sleep peacefully and quietly without nursing (yay!), and then DH laid him down in his toddler bed. We left the door open, and we have a monitor turned on. I'm planning on staying up until his usual midnight wakeup time to see how he does. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn't freak out terribly. If he does, then I may try sleeping on a blow up air mattress in his room until he gets used to sleeping in there.