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Nightweaning twins

929 views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  nd_deadhead 
#1 ·
Has anybody ever night weaned their twins. I have very different little boys and the night weaning will have to also be different.

DS2 is very attached and when I have tried to limit nursing at night he could cry and scream for hours. (him being comforted the whole time) And his brother, DS1, whines a little at first but just rolls over and goes back to sleep. The problem is that ds2 wakes ds1 up and gets him upset and crying and screaming. And then they go on for hours together.

I have been either sleeping seperately with DS1 and dh has been sleeping with DS2 or Dh sleeps with both and I sleep with DD. They sleep fine and when I am not around they go right off to sleep. DD1 does this when I am around too.

How long should I be seperate from Ds2 to night wean him? I am just sure that soon as I go back into the bed with ds2, no matter how long he has been nightweaned, he will **** be hysterical when I don't nurse him during the night.

Any suggestions? I must do this, my health is just suffering with the all night wakings, and I am just not the parent I want to be in the day because of the lack of sleep.
:
They are 21 months BTW.

TIA
 
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#2 ·
I was right where you were last November -- physically sick because of being up all night with two very demanding babes (or one who would always wake the other). I nightweaned when they were 18 months with the help of my parents (we were visiting them at their house with many rooms). They saw what a wreck I was so agreed to help. I just told the girls what would happen, nursed them to sleep at about 11 p.m., put them in their cribs (which were in separate rooms), and each parent stayed in the separate room with each babe all night, patting and shusshing and holding whenever they woke and cried. I brought them in to bed with me to nurse and sleep at 5 a.m. I figured we had spent 18 months of nursing on demand, day or night, so it wouldn't be fair for them to not have the attention -- just not nursing. It took five nights, but wasn't hard by the third night. They woke probably 10 times that first night, and only about 5 times the second, and only once or twice the third. I was able to cosleep with them when we got home -- we were away about 10 days, and they seem to have "learned" the new habit when we got home... and did well with it (except when sick).

Good luck. Oh, it's so hard being where you are right now. Hang in there... my thoughts are with you.
 
#4 ·
We are trying this next week. DD would sleep all night if her brother didn't occasionally wake her. He gets up, shrieks, nurses for all of 3 minutes, then goes back to sleep. It wouldn't be bad if he didn't sometimes do this every 2 hours. Next week DH is taking on the "soothe the boy back to sleep" duty to try and get him to go back to sleep sans boob. I am not looking forward to it just because I'll get less sleep while we are in the midst of this, but I am hoping that once we do it I'll be able to get a 6 hour block every night. I wouldn't bother, but they are now so active I need more patience to deal with them during the day than my night wakings are letting me have.
 
#5 ·
My sons night-weaned when I went on a week-long business trip. Up to that point, they had been up to nurse every night - not for long, but up just the same.

While I was gone and DH was giving them bottles, he saw that they would only take an ounce or two in the middle of the night! They were big babies, and certainly didn't need an ounce or two to get them through the night! Of course when I was nursing I didn't know how much (or how little) they were getting at that feeding.

So DH tried something different. When they woke up in the night, instead of a bottle of EBM, he gave them each a bottle of water. It made them both MAD! But they both decided, after 2 nights, that it was not worth getting up in the night for water (and the snuggling that went with it), and they have been sleeping through the night ever since (12 years now...)
 
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