Nightweaning before upcoming travel -- bad idea?

[acupuncturemomma]

Totally dreading it, but I think we are going to start nightweaning tonight (using Jay Gordon's plan.) We have travel plans for a ski trip in about two weeks, which will involve a road trip and sleeping in a hotel. Then we're home for two weeks and off again on another road trip. I wonder if I might be setting us up for a harder time with all of the uupheaval, but I'm not sure I can endure the wakeful nights until late April!

[tavamom]

If you're "totally dreading it," why are you doing it?  If you're wanting to night-wean anyway, regardless of the road trip in a few weeks, you could certainly start now.  However, with the trip so nearby, I think it would be easier to begin night-weaning AFTER the trips are over.  You may begin night-weaning, only to go back to old routines on the road trip, for everyone's comfort, and have to start over after things have settled down again.

We've found it easier to manage travel plans with babies and toddlers when they're nursing at night.  Helps them sleep if they're in your bed.  Just get a room with a king size bed for you and the toddler, use a cot or second bed for the older daughter, and you're good to go.  Far less disruption in sleep routine when you do it this way, in my experience.

The last trip we did with our night-weaned 19-month-old DS, I got so little sleep because he wasn't in bed with us and he wasn't nursing at night.  Every time he woke up, I ended up sitting next to him in a hotel chair singing to him.  If he were still night nursing, he would have been sleeping in our bed and I wouldn't have spent any time in the night sitting awake in a chair wishing I were sleeping.  

So just from my own experience with toddler/baby travel...  don't night wean now...  wait until later and sleep in bed with your son while traveling.  Sooo much easier.

It also took me months to night wean completely, so starting now would be too late to make any real progress, if it works for you like it did for me.