[cherubcheeks]

Hi

Could someone please lend a hand on how you stopped feeding your little one to sleep during the night.

My DS is 8 months and has always woken for a feed in the night. This is fine and doesn't bother me, but he has now decided that everytime he wakes in the night he would like a feed before going back to sleep.

I know that he isn't hungry because he can have a full feed at midnight and then wake 2 hours later for another feed and then again in two hours time! Cheeky!

He falls asleep both during the day and for bed at night by himself with no rocking or sushing etc, it's just he is having trouble resettling at night.

Did you replace the feed with water or just rock and shush?? I have tried the rock and shush technique and he can cry on and off for an hour before I give in and feed him again.

I would really like to break this habit now as the rest of the family is starting to suffer from all the wakes.

Look forward to hearing what worked for you.

Thanks

[Miss S]

I did water with both of mine and they each lasted around a week before they decided it was just not worth the effort

[cherubcheeks]

Thanks Miss S. Was there lots of crying after the water or did they go back to sleep OK afterwards?

[mumatelle]

Does your son use a dummy? When I was weaning my son I would give him a real big cuddle in a position similar to that in which he'd be in while feeding while he sucked on his dummy and i would rub his head/face while rocking gently and shushing in a calm voice... it was hard as i was so tired and just giving him some milk was so much easier than trying to comfort him without it when he was in that habit but like you the waking was getting ridiculous! i stayed strong and it only took about a week before he had stopped looking for it and eventually not waking at all (well most nights!) all the best!!

[cherubcheeks]

Hi

Thanks for your reply.

No, he doesn't have a dummy.

Great to know that I will have about a week of sleepless nights - something to look forward too.

Thanks again

[HollyOllyOxenfre...]

We've recently broken the habit of feeding on every overnight waking (DS is just under 6 months) and I now only feed 1-2 times a night - a couple of weeks ago DS was waking up to 6 times a night and I was feeding to sleep.

We saw a private sleep consultant to help with that and other sleep issues, but basically she gave us some settling techniques like rocking and shushing, and the way we've done it is that DH gets up to him in the night if it's not a feed time or a hungry cry. The first couple of nights he still woke a lot, but he's now down to waking for his two feeds and maybe one other waking a night. I think by me not being the one to settle him he gets the idea that it's not a feed time

Good luck OP - I remember far too well how exhausting it is

[Lakey]

Watching this carefully, our 8 m/o DS does exactly the same. He has a dream feed around 10pm and then wakes every 2 hours! He goes longer during the day~!

It's a shock to the system, he's never been a brilliant sleeper but he was finally starting to sleep 6 or so hours before waking overnight. He won't allow us to rock or shush, he gets angry! I didn't know babies could get angry but he does. If we try to pat him he screams and arches until we pick him up. His sister is just across the hall, so we're conscious of waking her also, which does happen every so often.

I might try the water and see what happens...

[Tesseract]

You can try Elizabeth Pantley's No Cry Sleep Solution which has heaps of stuff on gently weaning off feeding to sleep.

I have recently done Jay Gordon's night weaning approach http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html but as he says, this is only really recommended for a baby older than 12 months. If you really wanted to go down a path like this then I would think about starting with a much smaller time block at that age, and then building it up over a few months.

Night weaning has been a hugely emotive issue for me. I couldn't embark on it until I was 100% ready and was sure that DD was 100% ready. For us this wasn't until 13 months.

All the best, the sleep deprivation is truly awful, I feel for you.