Night weaning... or something?

[CrunchyMamaAmanda]

We have been co-sleeping with our 21 month old since she was born and LOVE IT.  I am still breastfeeding her as well and she generally indulges at night, lol.  I just found out I am pregnant and definitely want to cut back on the nursing.  What is frustrating for me is that she was sleeping through the night when she was about 8 months old, but now wants to nurse ALL NIGHT.  Over the past several months I have been working at unlatching her during the night and she is getting much better.  Sometimes she will whimper but generally just falls back to sleep.  I am also trying to teach her to say goodnight to the "boobies" (lol) and that she can have them in the morning when the sun wakes up.  I think she's starting to understand, but obviously, she's still young.  

I would also like to start weaning her out of our bed.  That thought makes me sad, but I do not want to co-sleep with a toddler, an infant, a dog, and my husband in a queen size bed!!!!  We converted her crib (which was never used!) into a toddler bed and moved it in our room when she was about 15 months old.  She loves her bed but never wants to go to sleep in it.  For a while she did, but no longer.  I sometimes move her to her bed when my husband and I go to sleep but she generally wakes up within 2 hours and comes back with us.

If anyone has advice to make this process easier and more gentle on both of us I would appreciate it very much!!

[Shaki]

In your situation I would chose one thing at a time and work on that. Either night nursing or sleeping in a separate bed. I guess I'd go with the  night weaning first as I'd see that as the step before staying in her own bed at night. Plus if you've got baby number 2 coming down the pike you will be nursing the newborn at night and I imagine tandem night nursing would be really tough (although I'm sure there are some mamas around here who have done it).

When we nighweaned I think we followed (not exactly bu loosely) Dr Jay Gordon's nightweaning advice (you can google it). Night weaning was hard and I just commented on another thread that my DH had to be very involved. But I felt it was worth it, it made our nights so much easier once the weaning process was done. And it gave me the space I needed to allow DD to nurse as much as she wanted during the day without feeling resentful. She self weaned at a little younger than 4 years old and that worked out fine for both of us.

I guess another issue you may want to think about is if you want to tandem nurse during the day or have your DD fully weaned before the little one arrives. You might find some good advice on that in the extended nursing forum.

[CrunchyMamaAmanda]

Thanks!  I have no problem with her nursing during the day or tandem nursing.  At this point, she's pretty much weaned herself to naps and bedtime (and even bedtime is becoming less and less).  I'm just a little nervous to be nursing too much now that I'm pregnant because I had a mc a few months ago and I'm pretty sure it's because hormones have been out of whack!  I just want to do what's best for us all in the easiest way possible!

[sunnygir1]

I moved my dd to her own bed in the room adjacent to ours and night weaned her around the same time (17-18 months).  There was some kicking and screaming around both, but it resulted in more and better sleep for both of us.  I actually think night weaning was easier because she wasn't sleeping right next to me all night (which would make her want to nurse even if she didn't really wake up.

Bed transition:

I started by setting up the room and getting her used to it.  We had a full mattress on the floor, and we would hang out in there a little, read stories in there, and talk about how she was going to start sleeping in there pretty soon.  Then I started putting her down for naps in there.  And after a few weeks of that I started putting her down for the night in there.  It was really hard at first (before this the only way I could get her to sleep was an hour + of nursing, walking, rocking, nursing, walking, etc.) but I would just lay her down gently and tell her it was time to go to sleep.  She would immediately get up again, and I would lay her down again.  The first night I probably did that for 20-30 minutes straight, with her screaming some of the time.  Within a week (more or less?) she would lie down with me and go to sleep.  It still took her a long time to go to sleep sometimes, but at least I wasn't nursing her ten times after the milk was gone and hauling her around for an hour.  I was so sleep deprived that I would often fall asleep before she did and wake up an hour or more later and go to bed.  I really liked having the full bed for her because I could go in there when she woke in the night and lie with her for a few minutes, or whatever.  We still brought her into our bed, too, though (until her baby brother came along when she was 2.5).

Now I'm ready to night wean ds and can't get him to sleep...we were up from 1-6am this morning -- even though I gave up and nursed him around 4.  I am thinking about moving dd (4) into our room and doing the same kind of bed with him in her room until he gets the hang of it.

Night weaning:

For dd I started with a set of hours -- midnight - 5:00am during which I wouldn't nurse her.  We talked about it a lot before hand, which I think helped.  There was a lot of hollering the first couple nights.  She wasn't scared or anything, but definitely angry.  Once we got that down, I made it bedtime-5am and eventually 7am or whenever we were waking up.  It went surprisingly well, and was a life-saver for me.  Dd had always been a poor sleeper, and I had been sleep deprived her whole life.