Weaning from nursing to sleep?

[smeep]

DD is 13 months. She nurses down to sleep for bed and nap and wakes up once at night to nurse (like hungry nurse). I don't mind her actually nursing down much of the time - if she's tired enough it only takes 10-20 minutes before I can escape.

But at night, about 30-60 minutes after I put her down, she wakes up and starts crying for me because she wants to nurse back down, and that is the one where it may take another 10-20 minutes, or it could take up to an hour - and if I don't get to her quickly, she might just wake up and take the past 30-60 minutes as a nap. This happens in about half of her naps too - 15-30 minutes in she wakes up screaming to nurse back down, and probably half of the time she does that I end up in there the rest of her nap stuck to her or she just totally wakes up. 

Like I said, I don't mind her waking up in the middle of the night when I'm in the bed sleeping with her, it's the waking up after initially going down, and sometimes it happens 2 or 3 times! I just want her to learn how to go back to sleep on her own without thinking BOOB, MUST HAVE BOOB, NEED BOOB NOW!  Sometimes my mom has gone in there and laid down with her and a couple times she was fine falling back to sleep because she knows my mom doesn't have the goods. But with me I can't just hold her or sit there with her, she wants my boobs and that's that. Plus if she could learn to go down without nursing, it would make leaving her with someone else a LOT easier (I've had *two* nights out since she was born).

I'm going crazy. I really am. Nuts. PLEASE HELP ME!! 

[rebeleducation]

I remember feeling that my baby was psychic.

If he knew that I wanted him to go to sleep right away (because we had guests, or wanted to watch a movie, or whatever), that he would take especially long.

Could it be that she feels that you are thinking of weaning?

Maybe she feels desperate to get as much as she can before the inevitable happens.

My advice is just relax into it. Don't think about it while nursing.

If she feels you're relaxed, she'll relax.

Extra-long bedtime stories helped us a lot.

[letileon]

My son was like this. He would always fall asleep at night and wake within an hour or so and want to nurse to sleep and then if I didn't get in bed within the next half hour or so he'd wake up looking for me. I got tired of going in and sneaking out over and over so I just started to go to sleep at, like 9:30. Anyway, he now goes to sleep at and stays asleep (although sometimes rouses to look for me)  much better and that's because I night weaned him. That being said, he was 20 months old when I did it, not 13. I'm not advocating to night wean your daughter. I think you have to decided whether she's ready but I will say that for me night weaning has allowed my son to learn to put himself back to sleep. When they aren't expecting to nurse there really isn't anything to wake up for.