Several readers out there are considering night-weaning, with the potential that this may make it easier to sleep-train their babies. I want to emphasize that night-weaning is NOT necessary for sleep-training, but your child may get the sleep lesson faster if he isn't SOMETIMES fed and SOMETIMES not. I wouldn't recommend night-weaning until your baby is eating solids during the day. So, probably not before 4 months and I'm more inclined to suggest 6 months or so. This is mainly because most babies' tummies before 4-6 months are still quite small and they need the round-the-clock feeding to continue to thrive. OK, let's talk about some strategies that might help.
The first consideration is if the mother is breast- or bottle-feeding at night. If you are bottle-feeding (either expressed breastmilk or formula) during the night, then there's a handy little trick that works for a lot of us. Oh… and if you're NOT bottle-feeding and you're dying a slow and painful death from sleep deprivation, you might want to consider handing your partner the bottle and showing him/her the way to the baby's room at 3 am — pump or mix up some formula and away he/she goes (and 3 or more hours of uninterrupted sleep could be yours). Ahem… I digress. If you ARE bottle-feeding at night or you COULD be (in other words, if your baby DOES take a bottle and you CAN pump or are OK with formula), try this "graduated weaning process":
1. Plan on about 10 days for this process to work.
2. On the first night, prepare the bottle with one less ounce of milk than usual, and replace this ounce with water. This way, your baby is getting the same amount of liquid, but one less ounce of milk. (For example, if your baby usually gets 6 ounces of milk, put 5 ounces of milk and one ounce of water in the bottle instead).
3. Feed baby this amount every time she wakes up in the night, for the next 2 or so nights. Guaranteed, the child will not notice this first stage. Soothe baby back to sleep
4. On the third day, take out another ounce of milk and replace with another ounce of water (so now you have 2 ounces of water and the rest milk). Soothe baby back to sleep.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until the baby starts with the HATE. In other words, continue to replace more and more milk with water. At some point in this gradual process, most babies start noticing and protest. Some protest A LOT. Others, remarkably, very little. Most kids will take a few sips of the now water-with-a-tiny-drop-of-milk and give up, but many will finish the water. Soothe back to sleep.
6. Usually, by the time the baby does start to notice (around the 10-day mark), you will be giving her almost NO milk and you will have been doing this for several days. That means, the child hasn't been getting much nutrition at all from these night feedings for days now.
7. Continue to give the baby water every time she wakes up. Or at this point you can substitute with a soother/pacifier if she takes one and if you're into that sort of thing.
8. At the same time you're doing this gradual weaning, you should be trying to up the baby's caloric intake during the day. This can be through nursing, formula-feeding or solids.
9. That's it. At the point that your baby is waking up and only getting water from the bottle, your baby is night-weaned. If he's going back to sleep with your help after the water, then he is no longer getting hungry. The whole point of this process is to get to a place — GRADUALLY — where you know that the baby no longer NEEDS the nutrition that he usually got at night. He will compensate during the day.
This is a slow, gentle process by which the baby's body becomes gradually accustomed to getting fed only during the day. At night, the same hunger pangs need not arise anymore. For me, this process was critical to go through before I started sleep-training so that I could ensure that when my boys did wake up at night during the sleep-training phase, they weren't hungry (and I wasn't filled with doubts/guilt as to whether they really needed the food or not).
Night-weaning is quite a different ball game if you're exclusively nursing during the night. In this case, transitioning usually requires a whole lot of support from your partner, if you have one (and if you don't, I would enlist the help of family or a close friend; otherwise, this can be a very painful process for one person alone… not impossible, but HARD).
Your partner needs to start doing more night soothing during times when the child is used to being nursed. Also, because it's very, VERY hard to just offer the breast for a couple of sucks and then take it away, it's harder to GRADUALLY decrease the amount of milk the child receives. So, sometimes, this is a more hard and fast weaning process. Many mothers report that cutting off the night feedings entirely was much easier than trying to cut them down to just one or two. Mostly because the baby doesn't get the idea that sometimes you're allowed to nurse at night and sometimes you're not. So, when the baby does wake up, the partner starts to soothe. As usual, it always depends on your child, but the partner's soothing could involve back- rubbing or cuddling in bed (especially if you co-sleep) or in the crib or, more likely, the process will involve being out of the bed, rocking and/or bouncing the child. The first few days are going to be the hardest. Sometimes, mom needs to be out of the room every time the baby wakes up and wants to be nursed. If the child is old enough to understand words and some more complex ideas, saying things like this might help: "boobie is empty now and needs to make more milk and will be ready in the morning", "you can have it when you see the sun", or "boob is sleeping". In the morning, you'll need to be prepared to nurse for a long time. The soother is a big help here, again, if your baby takes one and you're into giving her one. Singing also has helped many women. Instead of nursing to sleep, some kids quickly switch to being sung to sleep, some favourite songs help, but introducing some new lullabies can be helpful too. Some kids adopt new soothing behaviours like belly-rubbing (the baby's or yours), playing with mommy's hair, sucking their thumb, and so on. You can also try to introduce new items to soothe with like lovies, stuffed animals, blankies, etc. Lots of love, affection, cuddling and discussion of what is going on (even if it's a wee lie) can help the older ones especially. Also, keep in mind that SOME kids are not big cuddlers and don't NEED the tight shmushing to compensate — we as mothers often try to pull our kids physically closer during these times when they might feel best with a little space of their own. So, keep an eye out for these signals and try not to take it personally (HA!) when your child pushes you away a bit and starts to self-soothe instead.
This is a tough transition. For both the baby and the mother. Be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack. Try to ease the guilt you might feel with lots of playtime and cuddling during the day.
Anyone been through night-weaning and have some extra pointers? Words of encouragement? Horror stories? Anyone want some support while thinking about starting this transition?
I’ll take any words of encouragement offered.
My little guy is 16 months and its way past time to night wean, but each time I set out to do it there seems to be something preventing it (ear infection, teething, guests in the house, changing rooms at daycare, etc). I work and I’ve been employing the “whatever gets us the most sleep” method. But it is time.
I wouldn’t still be breastfeeding at this age except for his milk/soy intolerance. The ped. keeps saying he’ll outgrow it soon (every does, ha). Anyway I’ve been feeling a little lost because I can’t wean to cow’s milk and he’s not that crazy about the hypoallergenic formula. And the guilt about him not getting the proper nutrition. I’ve found some information that he may be able to tolerate goat’s milk and I’m planning to try that soon.
Anyway, my question is this, if I night wean will my supply drop off? I’ve already seen a decrease over the last 3-4 months. I don’t know why this feels monumental to me, maybe its the daycare guilt.
Thanks for the post. I was planning to have the boobaloob is sleeping, there’s no milk till morning chat. I’m really dreading this change, but I’m really really wanting my boobs back.
Any guess at how many nights it’ll take? We’ve done CIO training (after all the no-cry alternatives) with success. He currently goes down at night (in his crib/room) with relatively little crying.
Thanks again, your sight is really giving me encouragement right now.
Night weaning was essential for sleep training our little guy. We started at just over 6 months when he went from waking up once or twice a night to waking up 3, 4 and even 5 times a night and became increasing difficult to get back to sleep. He was big for his age and had slept through the night a few times before we started, and he was also eating solids eagerly, so I was pretty confident he wouldn’t starve. However, I was nursing and he wouldn’t take a bottle, and if I tried to limit his nursing time I got a frenetic burst of misery.
We ended up doing a split the night trade-off since as long as I was visible he would insist on massive nursing. My husband went in and comforted the munchkin whenever he woke up during the first half of the night and I responded if he woke up during the second half. There was some massive screaming the first few nights, but after a week or so, he started sleeping through the entire night. I think he decided that if he couldn’t nurse on demand he might as well get a good night’s sleep.
That was pretty much it for sleep training for us, although he had occasional short wake-ups over the next few weeks. As far as supply issues went, I never noticed a major problem, and am still nursing the little guy a couple of times a day at 20 months.
I have an almost 7 month old son who I am in the process of sleep training and night weaning. We are down to just 1 nursing session at 2am or 3am at this point. I am struggling with eliminating this feeding though. My little Ducky won’t take a bottle either so that makes it a bit difficult. I can manage to feed him on just one side, but I haven’t eliminated the feeding yet. I think it’s more fear on my part than anything else. The early morning hours (between 4a – 6a) are still really tough and I’m worried that eliminating this last feeding will make it even tougher. Any tips on eliminating this last feeding for a breastfed baby or tips for how to get Ducky to sleep past 5am would be greatly appreciated!
We are also in the process of sleep training and potentially night weaning our 10-month-old daughter. She is one of those tall and skinny babies (i.e. 90th percentile height vs 25th for weight) so I do worry that if I night wean, she will get even thinner than she is now. In any case, we tried the sleep lady shuffle about 3 weeks ago and it worked amazingly well, to the point that by night 4, I could put her in her crib and she went to sleep almost immediately, whereas in the past it’s always been a 1-2 hour process to get through bed time (not to mention the numerous night wakings we were dealing with.) Unfortunately, all that hard work went out the window when she got her first ear infection complicated by teething and travel. So despite our massive success with SLS, I slid back to old habits and went back to nursing her down at bedtime and for every wake up.
The other issue I find that makes sleep training harder is that my husband is such a softie. Of course, he would love to have her sleep in her own crib in her own room (right now her crib is located about a foot away from our bed, before that it was actually side-carred with bungee cords) but every time I try sleep training when he’s around, he will come in after 15-20 min and say, “are you sure she’s not hungry?” or “maybe she’s teething” and will convince me to let her nurse. I think one of the reasons we were so successful 3 weeks ago was that he was out of town and couldn’t hear her crying/screaming those first couple of nights.
Anyway, I have officially re-started the SLS tonight and I let baby cry for about an hour before she finally gave up and went to sleep. It’s even sadder now because she can consistently make the sign for “nurse” and will do it in desperation while she is screaming at the top of her lungs, since it worked the past few nights when I was trying not to pick her up when she woke but at the same time was so proud of her for figuring out how to tell me she wanted to nurse, so which habit to prioritize more–sigh!
I do have a few questions for more experienced moms out there about night weaning.
1) How do you deal with engorgement/plugged duct issues? The longest I can usually go without nursing/pumping is about 5-6 hours before I feel like my boobs will explode. (I’m barely an A cup normally.) Do you just pump during the times you would normally nurse at night? Or do you do a dream feed in the middle of the night?
2) We had been teaching our daughter elimination communication since she was 3 months old. While we’re not militant about it, she will definitely let us know she has to poop by refusing to settle at night, sometimes for an hour or two before she starts grunting/straining into her diaper, at which point I realize she’s been trying to tell me she had to poop all along and will take her to finish over the toilet. I guess this is the same as anyone dealing with traditional potty training, but how do you expect them to sleep through the night versus teach them not to ignore their need to poop/pee at night?
3) For those who are nursing, everything I’ve read says that you should nurse more often when baby is sick. Does that include overnight, and if so, doesn’t that mean every time baby gets sick, sleep training goes out the window? I am just paranoid that if I refuse to nurse at night while she’s sick, that she will get dehydrated and sicker the next morning.
4) At what age can I expect to nurse only two or three times a day? We are still nursing 6-7 times a day or more if you include night wakings.
Sorry my posts are always novel-length, but this blog seems to be addressing everything we are facing at the moment and I just need a place to share/learn/not feel guilty about making my baby cry.
I was never able to really and truly night wean until I cut out the moring feed altogether at 28 months. I had started the process at 7 months ( using a modified CIO), and set myself a time (5.30), before which I would not nurse her. Unfortunatley my then 7 month old didn’t come with a clock. She’d wake at 5.15 and I’d think, ‘well that’s close enough, here’s boobie’, and then she’d wake up earlier and still earlier wanting booby. Sometimes I’d oblige, sometimes not ( depending how early I’d have to get up for work). Of course, the poor kid was getting mixed messages and would wake up anyway, crying at all hours that she’d want boobie. Reminders involving more modified CIO would ensue and then for a while we were ok again, until the next developmental spurt/transition.
Around 28 months I decided to cut out nursing before sleep/naps, but she still got her morning feed and of course the wake-ups for a nurse got earlier and earlier. My husabnd had been at me to give up nursing in the hope DD might wake up less thru the night( not that it affected him directly ‘cos he rarely gets up when DD wakes). I thought he might be right at this stage and decided the morning feed could go, but I would still hold on to the afternoon one. I spoke to my daughter and explained there would only be milky from a cup in the morning and after everyone was up and she was was cool about it. The first couple of nights/mornings when she did wake up, I sent in my hubby to explain that there was no more booby and again she was really good about it and just rolled over and went back to sleep. With me she only kicked up a fight once, and now ( after 2 months) she does not ask for milk when she wakes up at night. She DOES however, STILL wake up, but she is 30 months old and I know the waking up has less to do with wanting a feed/liquid, than with it being a part of this transition she is going thru. Am hoping it doesn’t go on for ever though.
@Amy riddle
My older child night weaned at 10 weeks old. But he nursed every hour from the moment he was up to when he went to bed, until he was 6 months old (when he would go 2-3 hours withough a suck) It was really exhausting building a milk supply, in fact, I went 11 lbs under my pre-pregnancy and was physically drained. My supply did not change at all after, say, 6 months, when I started introducing solids. I was still nursing him a lot (7/8 times a day) at 12 months, though. I’m no expert, but I don’t think you will see a great difference in supply if you night-wean, especially if you are still nursing him a lot during the day.
Thanks for the tips Isabel, although we’re a nursing/co-sleeping family at the moment. When we get to it, it might be harder than a bottle switch-a-roo. I’ve been thinking about night weaning, but bub was 7 weeks early and is small for his age so I hesitate to deny him the extra calories. Although….he’s not the best eater, so I’m pretty sure if we cut down the nursing at night, he might grow an appetite during the day.
Anyway, it usually comes down to being exhausted at night and sticking to our routine that works (for now).
We significantly cut back the night nursings at about 10 months (dropped down to one feeding in the nighttime), and fully nightweaned (dropped the last night time nursing session) at about 23 months.
During the 10 month “nightweaning”, we had the best luck with postponing the time until a feed as a way to gradually decrease the feedings. At the time, she was getting a bottle of expressed milk and then nursing 1-3 additional times. We were going insane and trying lots of things to decrease the night wakings. So we would set a time (like “we won’t nurse before 1 a.m.”) and if she woke before that, Hubby would go in and try to get her back down. I have to say, it was a tough time for Hubby, but I don’t think it lasted that long. We were able to get her down to one nursing session in the middle of the night, but could not get rid of the last one without requiring Hubby to spend literally hours holding her. It didn’t seem worth it when I could just nurse her, put her down, and be back in bed in about 20 minutes.
We first tried to drop the last night nursing session when Pumpkin was 22 months old. Sending Hubby in was a disaster. Hysterical screaming ensued. We stopped trying after a few nights of really bad sleep for everyone and then tried again a few weeks later. At that point, I just went in and said “no” when she asked to nurse. She cried very briefly, then snuggled in and went to sleep. I think she needed to know that Mommy was still there if she needed me, even if we weren’t nursing.
I posted about both nightweaning “sessions” on my blog- a search on nightweaning in my blog would probably turn up the relevant posts. I can’t go look them up right now.
@Tina- clearly we decided that dropping that last nursing wasn’t worth it for us. I found that the change from multiple wakings throughout the night to one waking was enough to make it possible for me to function, as long as I was good about going to bed early.
As for sleeping past 5- what worked for us whenever she went through a phase of waking ridiculously early (as opposed to the first 5 months or so of her life, when she just thought 4:30 was morning) was to hold her for the last hour or so of sleep. One of us would get up, pick her up, stumble to the sofa, and sleep for another hour or so with her in our arms. After a couple of weeks of this, she would usually just start sleeping through to her normal wake up time again- which was 6 a.m. Some babies are just early birds! She now sleeps until almost 7 most days, though.
@Catherine- we dropped down to 3-4 feedings when Pumpkin was about 18 months old, I think. But she was never that into her solid foods. Some people I know dropped the number of nursings down earlier. I think it depends on the kid and how many calories he/she is getting from other sources.
Whenever Pumpkin was sick with a tummy bug, I nursed more, even during the night. I figured I was up anyway, so I might as well nurse her. I never woke her up to nurse. She always went back to her “normal” night waking schedule once she got better. But she was always a rather poor sleeper, and our sleep training efforts never included CIO- if they had, and if she had ever actually slept WELL, I might have done differently.
We are at 19 mos with our daughter, and it has taken a couple months to completely night wean her. A bit of crying, water replacement and soother help.
For the most part though, I had to physically remove myself from the wakes by sleeping in a completely different wing of the house for gradually longer periods of time at a time, because it is NOT JUST THE BABY thats in tune with this cycle, MOMMY TOO in my case :)! I had to night wean me, from waking every 2 hours.
Ear plugs, the couch and a great dedicated hubby and gradual removal of myself and its worked brilliantly.
She has been night weaned for about a month, we continue to breastfeed about once a day, at the end of the day.
So:
Really surrendering to hubby helping (or good friend/family member)
Removing from hearing the waking (ear plugs, different room etc)
Commitment, stick with it.
Thats what worked for us, very gently!
@Amy Riddle: So glad you’re getting some support here. I can’t really give you an exact number of days, or even an estimate. Kids are so different… GOOD LUCK!
@Catherine: about your baby signing to nurse, I would acknowledge that you understand her, but remain firm if you don’t want to nurse her. So something like, “Yes baby, I know you want milk but you’ll get that after sleeping/waking in the morning” etc. In terms of plugged ducts, if you slowly night-wean, then as most people have said, your body usually adjusts quickly and most of us don’t have problems. Pumping will just prolong the adjustment phase. About being sick, once kids are night-weaned, they don’t need or ask to be nursed. There are other ways they can be soothed (see post for examples). But yes, oftentimes parents have to implement a “booster session” of sleep training after a bout of a cold where they were waking up constantly and being soothed back down by parents. Finally, about how many feedings is appropriate for whatever age, it totally depends on your baby and your own priorities. Many people suggest that babies should be getting the majority of their calories from milk in the first year. So, you nurse first and then provide solids after. Some kids need more encouragement to take more solids and it’s a bit of a balancing act to get them to take enough solids while still providing the milk. There’s no hard and fast rule. You’ll find the best combination for your child. GOOD LUCK!
@paola: i promise you it WON’T last forever. But it sure the hell felt like it…
@Cloud: thanks SO MUCH for your great feedback to everyone. REALLY helpful.
@Ash: we had a very similar experience. Except that I’m STILL not sleeping through the night consistently (although my children have long since been doing so).
Thanks for the tips, everyone. We are on night 4 and things are going much better than I thought they would based on how much she carried on the first night. We are down to a dream feed around midnight and then we nurse when she wakes up around 6:15am. She is still waking up at her previously scheduled wakeup times of 3:30, 4:30, and 5:30 asking to nurse but now she is going back down within a minute or less of fussing with the help of a pacifier. Hopefully she will stop the early morning wakeups altogether in a few more nights.