16 m.o. Extended BFing, co-sleeping, & up every 2 hours...is this even close to normal?

[McGucks]

My LO is 16 months.  He nurses many times during the day and still gets most of his calories through BFing.  He also still wakes about every two hours (give or take...sometimes it's every hour, sometimes I get three hours straight of sleep) at night.  The only way he goes back to sleep is by nursing, period, ever.  The only good part about his nights is that, for the most part (maybe 8 nights out of 10), he goes to sleep fairly quickly after nursing (within 10 minutes or so).  I can't always fall back to sleep, I am a super light sleeper (so his night movements often wake me) and have never ever been able to sleep through nursing. 

My question is:  if your child is around this age and still gets a lot of nursing during the day and you do co-sleeping, does your LO STTN?  DH is very supportive of EBF and co-sleeping, but my complaining about being tired sometimes leads to a question about whether my sleep deprivation is reasonable.  Honestly, I know I won't stop EBF or co-sl. regardless, but I would just like to know if and to what extent his night waking is out of the norm.

TIA and here's to a good night's sleep one of these years...

ETA:  DH is great with DS but does nothing to help at night...and, really, there's not much he can do since our LO wants nothing to do with him at night and the only way he can get back to sleep is by nursing.  BUT I really do get resentful sometimes that he gets so much sleep and I never do!  I know I shouldn't feel this way, but I can't help it, especially when I am super tired or DS won't go back to sleep after nursing.

[jocelyndale]

It's normal for your baby.  :)  And it was normal for mine.

He did self-nightwean and start STTN (those don't always coincide), but it wasn't until his molars came in, around 32-34mo.  

Once he was a bit older, I was sometimes able to defer nursing so that it wasn't quite so frequent.  Sometimes it was just the quickest way to get him to sleep, though, and I was ultimately okay with that.  At some point, you may want to consider nightweaning, especially if it's very hard for you to feel rested right now.  I can tell you that things did start easing up (in general) after 21-22mo, but that it was still touch and go for quite awhile.

You might enjoy Kathy Dettwyler's article on sleeping through the night.  It might just help you feel a bit better about the patterns you're seeing.

http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detsleepthrough.html

[Sharlla]

completely normal.  ds2 nursed allll night long until I weaned him at 24 months.  i had to make the choice to put Panda in her own bed when she was 14 months.  both she and i sleep a lot better this way. 

[lisavark]

That was normal for my kid, but as it turns out she has mild SPD with regulation issues that caused her to sleep poorly. I don't think the waking every couple of hours at 16 months was a symptom of that, though...it was when I tried (incredibly unsuccessfully) to nightwean her that I realized her patterns were no longer normal. One thing that might help you sleep better is putting another bed (a twin or a crib size) next to your bed...if yours is on the floor then it's easy to extend the bed with another mattress, and that can give you some more space which might help you sleep better when he's moving around. It helped me a lot when I was able to roll away and get a little space from the constant nursing. I used to nurse DD to sleep on "her" bed and then roll back into my bed. Usually by the end of the night she would snuggle back into my bed :), but it gave me some space. And it made an easier transition when we finally moved her to her own room. 

It gets easier, too, even if his sleep patterns don't change! I had a REALLY hard time with DD's sleep from 12 to 18 months...then it got easier. Things didn't change, but I felt more ok about it. Then at 2 I tried to nightwean her, which led to her staying awake for hours...but now at 3.5 she sleeps all night every other night on average. When she wakes it's usually because she needs to pee. She's in her own room now though, although I don't know how much of a factor that was. 

Google Jay Gordon's nightweaning program if you want to try nightweaning; that can really help a lot of toddlers sleep longer stretches! 

I liked the No-Cry Sleep Solution too. 

I will say I have a friend who coslept and breastfed (she actually reversed cycled her baby when she was really little because my friend was working full-time; baby had been sleeping all night and my friend started waking her to nurse! Crazy!) who slept through the night at 12 months and self weaned at 18 months. That's really unusual though; this kid has a super independent, busy personality. :) 

[carmen358]

My DD did this for months. And months. Actually, she woke more often than every 2 hours but luckily she also fell back to sleep really quickly but only with nursing. We looked at food allergies, etc. and got some small results. I then decided to give up caffeine to TTC again and immediately DD started sleeping 3-4 hour stretches. She was sleeping so well I decided to try night weaning (to get at least one 7 hour stretch at least). We did it when she was 18 months old and could understand when we told her what was happening. It was totally uneventful and she now (at 19 months) wakes only once between about 10pm and 5am or sometimes not at all and can fall asleep without nursing. I don't know that it was the caffeine or just being developmentally ready. Just wanted to share that it will get easier at some point :)