When Can I Night Wean?

[Greenlea]

Cross Posting:

My 7mth old son is up a ton at night.  He goes down for bed between 8 and 8:30pm and is up at least every 2 hours (sometimes more) until he's up for the day around 6:30am (sometimes as early as 5:30am though).  I nurse on demand during the day and three days a week he is at the sitter and takes bottles.  But does he really need to be eating so often at night at this age?

He has started eating some solids, we are doing baby led weaning.  He gets solids and lunch and dinner, after a nurse or bottle.  And recently I started trying to get him to soothe himself back to sleep if it hasn't been 2 hours yet, as I really can't be up all night long anymore.  And no, this is not a growth spurt - when he has growth spurts he's even worse!

So, when did you night wean?  Is he still too young?  Or maybe I could just get him to cut down on so many feedings at night?  What do you think? 

[Taryn237]

I personally wouldn't night wean  at 7 mo.  And yes, I've had all night nursers too.  Do you co-sleep?  I can normally latch baby on and then fall back asleep... until they are around a year.  I nightweaned DS at 21 mo. but was severely sleep deprived.  I decided to nightwean DD1 sooner so at 12 mo. we switched from her co-sleeping with to co-sleeping with DH using Dr. Jay Gordon's method (link below).

http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

[Greenlea]

I do co-sleep part of the night.  He starts off in his pack n play though. Problem is he won't let me lie down to feed him.  I have to actually sit up and use my boppy to feed him, so I can't sleep through it :(

[homemademom]

Originally Posted by Taryn237 

I personally wouldn't night wean  at 7 mo.  And yes, I've had all night nursers too.  Do you co-sleep?  I can normally latch baby on and then fall back asleep... until they are around a year.  I nightweaned DS at 21 mo. but was severely sleep deprived.  I decided to nightwean DD1 sooner so at 12 mo. we switched from her co-sleeping with to co-sleeping with DH using Dr. Jay Gordon's method (link below).

http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html

We used Dr. Gordon's method, too, when my kids were anywhere between 15 and 20 mths.

For more/better sleep, I found that if I nurse the baby just before I go to bed (around 10:30 pm), even if I have to wake him up, he'll go down and sleep for another 4 or 5 hours. He usually only wakes once a night, sometimes twice.  We also cosleep and nurse side-lying, so I don't have to wake up fully to do it.