Nightime weaning my babe. Desperate for help!

673 Views 13 Replies 10 Participants Last post by kellid, Apr 10, 2006

kellid

Discussion Starter · Apr 7, 2006

I need help night weaning. I am at my witts end. Really I am very, very frazzled.

Here's my story.

My boy is 23M old and I am 30 weeks pregnant. I want to night wean him before the baby comes.

This started almost a year ago I read the "No Cry Sleep Solution". He was co-sleeping at the time and nursed a lot through the night. I tried the pop off mechanism when he was about 9 months, which has never worked for us. Mostly I wanted sleep so I just dealt with it. He got his own room with his own bed (a twin futon that lies on the floor). I started taking him to bed, reading, nursing him to sleep, laying him down (or we would both go to bed in his bed - depending on the time it was) and then when he woke in the night I would go to him and sleep in there for the rest of the night. We continued to try the pop off randomly to see how he took to it, at least 2-3 times per night. Sometimes it would work. A small amount of relief.

Now I have had it, I am resentful, angry, sad, tired, and extremely irritated. I have been dry for about 5+ months, no more milk, since I'm pregnant. It hurts pretty bad to nurse. More irritating. It tingles, burns, itches, it feels a cats tongue raking over my nipple. I read the "NCSS for Toddlers" and it seems to be about the same read as the first. It makes sense to me; it's just not working out for us. It's been a week of no progress and we are definitely going in the reverse direction. I have gotten to the point to where I CAN handle listening to him cry, as long as he is in the arms or presence of his father or me.

I have been putting him to bed, starting (nursing) at 6:30 to ensure he will be to sleep by 8:00 (and hopefully before). His bedtime routine consists of 5:00 eating, 5:30 bath, 6:00 reading, 6:30 lights out. In the beginning (about a month ago) he would quickly go to sleep, 30 min - 1 hour. Now that I've been trying to night wean, IT TAKES 2+ hours of constant nursing. He's not mad about it, it just takes forever! He is very mad if dad tries to do it though. Screaming, bawling, "Ma Ma, Num Nums!!!!!!" Last night my husband and my heart lasted an hour.

The night weaning attempted is on 7 days and goes like this:
*Nurse him to sleep in rocker 1-2 hours
*Wakes up 1-3 times before we go to bed, (He doesn't have a problem with dad going in there to put him back to sleep before 11:00 - )
*He wakes up anywhere between 11:00 and 1:00 after we go to bed (which if dad goes in at these time, he will to the screaming thing)
*I go in and nurse him for the rest of the night and I mean non-stop. We try popping off, standing, bouncing, rocking, and anything just to calm him down. The second he knows I am going to start attempting to stop nursing he looses it. "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" kicking screaming, hitting, CRYING! It's awful. With dad it's the same way. Just gives me a break and my heart ways heavy.

What do we do? Do stick it out and let him cry in our arms until he goes to sleep? I am so lost.

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mamamelia

· #2 · Apr 7, 2006

my opinion is not going to be popular but here goes..

i say let him cry in arms and my reasoning is as follows.. he is obviously not tolerating the "gentle" weaning methods well. i think you know your son more than anyone here and when you say that you are going backwards, i believe your words.
you have 10 weeks till you start the frequent night nursing and night waking again. let's be practical and honest, can you handle dealing with your ds reactions at night and a newborn? you need some rest and some new nursing rules put into place, before this new babe comes along. you will not have the energy to initiate new rules later on. and you don't want to be lashing out like a maniac due to sleep deprivation. IMO, that is much worse and more tormenting than crying in arms would be.

quick question: are you sure his stomach is full? you said he has dinner at 5:30pm. 5:30-11:00 is a long time for a little tummy. i'm wondering if he is hungry and resisting and crying out of hunger? this happened to us and my dd just would not accept any method of soothing for certain nursing sessions because in reality she did not want to be soothed, she wanted to be fed. when we realised what was happening, we offered her a drink of water or snack at those times, and her resistance went down. the resistance didn't go down for the other times, but yeah, we figured out that she was in fact getting hungry throughout the night and it helped to know that.

how are you spending your day with him? sorry for what seems like a dumb question, but i also noticed that when i upped the day time affection my dd was less resistent to the no boobie rule. alot less resistent.

would you consider co-sleeping again? maybe that will help with the nightweaning. my 18mo daughter is almost nightweaned (she still gets boobie once a night and i'm ok with that for now - 7 weeks pregnant) and we are still co-sleeping. and i know her reaching out and touching me or hugging me at night helps her to cope with the no boobie factor.

i know how hard it is to hear your baby cry. i still can't stand it and that's why we couldn't night wean for a while. after a few minutes of crying i'd be heartbroken and nurse her again which obviously got us nowhere. so i know where you are coming from mama.

this is never an easy thing to do.

that said, i can't believe you've been dry nursing for 5 months! my hat goes off to you

i think your brilliant and you've given him a wonderful gift.
but.. i think it's time you got some rest too..

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kellid

Discussion Starter · #3 · Apr 7, 2006

Quote:

quick question: are you sure his stomach is full? you said he has dinner at 5:30pm. 5:30-11:00 is a long time for a little tummy. i'm wondering if he is hungry and resisting and crying out of hunger?

If I ever did think of this before, I thought that he would resist the breast too if it was hunger. I will try this. Do I bring him a snack to bed in his dark room? Is avacodo a good snack at this time?

Quote:

how are you spending your day with him? sorry for what seems like a dumb question, but i also noticed that when i upped the day time affection my dd was less resistent to the no boobie rule. alot less resistent.

Since I've been trying to keep him on a schedule I have been making a big effort at trying to keep him active. Before nap he might go to a playgroup, then after nap (he sleeps for 45min-1 hour then I try to keep him down longer by nursing, I might lay down and nap with him for another 45min-1 hour) he will play with his toys in/outside depending on the weather. After we pick dad up from work @ 4pm dad will play with him an hour or so before dinner.

Quote:

would you consider co-sleeping again? maybe that will help with the nightweaning. my 18mo daughter is almost nightweaned (she still gets boobie once a night and i'm ok with that for now - 7 weeks pregnant) and we are still co-sleeping. and i know her reaching out and touching me or hugging me at night helps her to cope with the no boobie factor.

I feel like I kinda do co-sleep. I'm in his room with him, practically all night. As far as bringing him to our bed with us, our bed is not big enough to fit all 4 of us, the baby will be in there for several months at least. Plus my dh would not have that. I wouldn't mind just sleeping with the d's, but I can't be a machine, I don't have it in me.

mamamelia, Thank you so much for your time and if you have any more suggestions.........

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lilsishomemade

· #4 · Apr 7, 2006

I don't have a lot of suggetions, I'm sorry!! I want to give you a

though! For the snack, why not offer a snack as part of the bedtime routine? That's what we do here, some crackers with pb or something like that, and a sippy cup with diluted chamomile tea in it. It has really helped my boys sleep through the night...

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kellid

Discussion Starter · #5 · Apr 8, 2006

Chamomille tea!!!!!! What a great idea thanks.

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royaloakmi

· #6 · Apr 8, 2006

First, hugs.

Second, is it possible that taking a long time to go to sleep doesn't have to do with the nightweaning? My twins went through that around that age - it would take 2-3 hours for them to nurse to sleep (and previously it took about 15-45 minutes).

I agree about a snack anyway. And what about shortening your routine so there's not as much build up to bedtime? Maybe it's really giving him time to gear up.

And don't feel bad about the NCSS, it never helped a bit with either of my twins.

I hope things get better for you.

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kellid

Discussion Starter · #7 · Apr 8, 2006

Thanks again everyone, I will keep you updated.

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alybeans

· #8 · Apr 8, 2006

Have you spent a lot of time explaining to him why he can't nurse at night anymore? I would talk to him several times throughout the day about how he'll going to sleep, your going to go to sleep, and the nursies are going to go to sleep. Maybe even play a game about it or make a book about it and read it to him over and over. Just some thoughts.

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RootBeerFloat

· #9 · Apr 8, 2006

Have you read The Aware Baby? She talkes about this issue at some length in there, it might be helpful to you. Although, she strongly advocates co-sleeping, so be prepared for that. I suggest it because her techniques are helping me night-wean my dd, who is 12 mo old. I am a weird mom in that my milk never came in after I gave birth (LONG story, it's awful), so she's been nursing at my dry breasts for 12 months and getting more and more rough with them . . . anyway, we're cutting down our night nursing with the help of suggestions from that book and I am BLOWN AWAY by how well it's working and how much happer DD is. You should check it out.

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DevaMajka

· #10 · Apr 8, 2006

Try having a sippy cup of water by the bed. If he's thirsty, that will help. (That wouldn't make a difference here, but it seems like a good thing to try)
I'm about done with the (very) frequent night nursings. Ds is 20 mos.

I was just searching for advice on this, and I came to the dr. sears site. I've done the explaining thing, but one thing I hadn't thought of was to tell ds that "nips are sleeping. mommy is sleeping. you go to sleep too"
I've been telling him to go to sleep without nips, but I know that's not a good way to phrase it- it should be a positive. kwim? I just couldn't think of anything.
And I also know that I get frustrated at night, with frequent nursings- is it possible that you are getting frustrated too, and it shows? I'd imagine that ds would be WAY more likely to go back to sleep, if mama was using a calm, loving voice, and not a frustrated "go to sleep". lol

The pantley pull off works a little bit for us though. He still nurses frequently, but at least I can roll over and get comfortable in between. Have you tried delatching, then giving it right back as soon as he seems unhappy about it? I had to do that many times the first time we did it. It was like, unlatch, and relatch right away. But after doing it a few times, he was ok with the unlatching. And he's usually pretty asleep when I do it- he wakes up just enough to roll over.

Oh...something that helped the other night. I got the bright idea to tell him that I was still right there with him, and I'd stay, even if I wasn't nursing him. We could cuddle, etc and I'd be right there. It made a HUGE difference (just that one time so far though). It had never really occured to me to tell him that, but now it makes a lot of sense, that him nursing is kinda his way of making sure that I'm there

Wishing you good luck

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lizabird

· #11 · Apr 9, 2006

FWIW, this is what worked for us. I nightweaned DS right after he turned 2.

He was down to 1 nursing each night. If he woke up and wanted more, I told him he could have one milk at night and then could have more in the morning when the sun comes up.

So my new years resolution was to try night weaning. So early January I told him it was time to go to bed, we'd read stories and have some milk, then the milk was going to sleep. He could have milk again in the morning when the sun comes up. Amazingly, when he awoke in the night to have milk, I said milk was sleeping and he could have milk in the morning when the sun comes up, and he wanted to touch the milk... so I quickly got used to going back to sleep with little toddler hands on my chest... but he just went right back to sleep! That's still where we are, milk in the morning, and touching milk, but that's working for the moment.

I also have the No Cry Sleep book for toddlers and we have the bedtime routine down pretty well and he usually falls asleep pretty well, but we haven't weaned him yet from the family bed, or from midnight milk-touches.

Hang in there, you'll find something that works for you.

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libbylu

· #12 · Apr 9, 2006

You must be so tired- hang in there!

My little note is that when we tried the Pull-off, I noticed it made him want to nurse MORE. Mostly, even if he seemed so asleep, it was like pulling him off made him keep himself awake so that he could make sure he didn't get pulled off. I also noticed he seemed more clingy in the day when I was trying to pull him off at night. It was like it had the reverse of the intended effect.

Also, is he tired during the day after everything?

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sunnysideup

· #13 · Apr 9, 2006

Dr. Jay Gordon has some tips for "changing the sleep pattern in the family bed" that I think would be helpful to your situation. Check out this link.

nak

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kellid

Discussion Starter · #14 · Apr 10, 2006

Thank you all for the suggestions. They are being put to use. We are currently on night 2 of NW and I will post a journal on how it goes. All babies are so different and it's so hard to find out what works best for "you" and "yours". That's why I love the opportunity to ask for help and to have so many people give me advice, and confort. Probably most of all comfort. Thanks again!!!!

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