Hi jessi,
you may not get very many responses to this because most mom's on this board either don't nightwean or do it much much later.
We tried at 12 months to nightwean my dd, or at least get her to nurse LESS OFTEN at night. We too were every hour, every two hours if we were lucky. It was starting to work with not too much protest and we moved, so it all went out the window.
Then we tried again around 15 months and it was much harder this time to console her without nursing but we were making progress. She would sleep for 5 hours and then get up a couple more times, but DH could rock her and sing to her and such. THEN she got the chicken pox. So now we are at almost 17 months and it is getting worse instead of better. Last night she cried and fussed and would ALMOST go back to sleep and then cry, etc. for about an hour. Finally I said ENOUGH! This can not be healthy, good for her etc. SO I came back into bed and nursed her.
Some things I should say is that at no time did we ever CIO. My dh always rocked her, sang to her, walk around the house, pat her, feed her a snack, drink of water, whatever was needed. It did get a little better when I started sleeping in the spare room, so the boob was not right there.
I don't mind some nursing at night but I was really suffering from not sleeping, and the physical drain of the nursing. I am continuing to lose weight. I think I am around 100 lbs. now. SO I have some really issues of concern.
My DH and I were talking this morning and he said She is MAD at night when she cries, not sad. But I disagree. SOmetimes she is mad, but I also think she is sad too. Or maybe i am sad about her crying. He did say she is trying to put herself back to sleep sometimes and sometimes she will accept his snuggling in lieu of nursing.
A couple things I might suggest you try to do before the nightweaning is this. Start with the going to bed time and nurse him a little but take him to bed awake, drowsy and pat him to sleep, instead of nursing to sleep. I don't know if you do this already. We don't and I think it is a problem. So I think we are going to start doing this.
Also Dr. Jay Gordon has a good sleep/weaning plan on his site. We have kind of tried to use it some.
http://www.drjaygordon.com/ap/sleep.htm
HOpe you find something that works for your family.