Nursing moms who CIO for overnight feedings

[Deleted]

Following. DD is 15 months and wakes at least once, usually twice MOTN to nurse. She had STTN a handful of times and is clearly old enough to not need to eat MOTN. I'm not sure how to night wean while nursing, except by cold turkey, which will be hard on my boobs, literally and figuratively.

[dulcemariamar]

How early does she wake up to eat?

I would try cutting it out cold turkey since it is only once.

[ktw]

At 8 months, I think you could do straight CIO. The other thing you could do is set a time before which you will not feed her. If she wakes up before that time, do CIO with or without checks. If she wakes up after that time, feed her, and then put her back to bed. Each night, move the time back 30 minutes or an hour, until you're not feeding her until the morning. I can't remember if this is from Ferber, or where I learned it, but it worked for us when we wanted to night wean at 8 months.

[dulcemariamar]

Jul 7, 2016 13:59:26 GMT -5 @starry said:

Jul 7, 2016 13:58:35 GMT -5 dulcemariamar said:

How early does she wake up to eat?

I would try cutting it out cold turkey since it is only once.

Around 3:30

I would just cut it out. It would be hard to push it back anyway. Does she fall asleep on her own?

my DD had trouble falling asleep without nursing so that was the biggest hurdle when CIO so the .mOTn wakeups was so much easier since she only cried only a little bit compared to the beginning of the night when we put her to sleep.

[dottyblue]

All I have to say is good luck. DH and I tried to let DS2 CIO the other night. We failed. We are both giant wusses who can't listen to our kid scream. Still at two feeds a night at 9.5 months...

[genet313]

I don't know about doing it at 8 months, but I did it with DD around 11 months pretty successfully.   I still went in and held her though after 5 minutes, so not really CIO.  It was clear she just wanted comfort, not to eat.  After about a month of that, she started STTN more consistently.  

[motzie]

Around 8 months I just stopped offering when she woke up. It took longer to get her down, but then she started sleeping through. I never really let her cry because we're in an apartment and DD1 was right across the hall, otherwise I would have. Instead I just rocked her for an hour.

[luv2rn4fun]

I think you can try and see if it works. I did a dream feed at 10:30p til about 11 months. Then I dropped the dream feed very uneventful (I had tried earlier but it did not work). By dream feeding at that time I was able to sleep 8/8:30-10:30 and 11-5 so I got a decent stretch if sleep.

[pooh8402]

Jul 7, 2016 14:06:03 GMT -5 @starry said:

Jul 7, 2016 14:02:42 GMT -5 dulcemariamar said:

I would just cut it out. It would be hard to push it back anyway. Does she fall asleep on her own?

my DD had trouble falling asleep without nursing so that was the biggest hurdle when CIO so the .mOTn wakeups was so much easier since she only cried only a little bit compared to the beginning of the night when we put her to sleep.

She falls asleep on her own 90% of the time. I'll nurse to sleep but then she wakes up when she gets in the crib and will play around a minute or two, roll over, and sleep.

MOTN she normally will NOT go to sleep on her own

This is E exactly. He still wakes once or twice a night. I'll CIO if it's been less than 5 hours since the last feeding, but I know he can go 8+. If he just wants comfort and I let him CIO, he'll go back to sleep within 15 minutes usually. If he's legit hungry though, he'll scream forever.

[fashionx]

We tried CIO, and ended up decreasing the nursing time by a few minutes each day. DD got the picture within 3 days and dropped the feeding on her own.

ETA: following this, if she does wake up MOTN now, we just hold her and rock a bit (not totally asleep), then put back down. Sometimes she will still cry for a few minutes after but is fine. I think I send DH in instead of me in the first week after dropping the feed though.

[game blouses]

That's the age I stopped nursing both boys at night. If they woke up, I'd cuddle them and pet their backs, but no milk. After a few nights they slept through - I guess they figured it wasn't worth it, lol.

[sillygoosegirl]

Ferber says to reduce the duration of nursing gradually, which I think just goes to show that he doesn't understand how breastfeeding works. We tried to do it anyway, but trying to actually time it was very difficult. And as soon as we started trying to shorten them, she got really hard to put back down. She'd become hysterical the second DH touched her to bring her back to the crib. We had a lot of false starts, but when we finally decided to do it, DH went in with a sippy cup (which she reliably rejected), rocked her, sang to her, and put her down to CIO. It sucked for a while, and she just started waking up too early for a while, so we had to then do even more sleep training for early wakeups.

[karinothing]

We did it at 15 months. I just started to wait longer and longer before I went in there and gave him a sippy of water in the crib. After a while he just stopped waking up.

[sierramist03]

My pedi said that our dd did not need to eat at night and said I could cut out night time feedings but dd was waking usually 2 times a night. I worked her to cut down to 1 and then we cut it out all together. Sometimes I will get up with her occasionally if she isn't settling down on her own generally she really is hungry (i.e. Are less during the day for one reason or another)

[lilac05]

We did an inconsistent combo of things, depending on the day.

I cut back the length of time he could nurse. No nursing for comfort (though that was pretty consistent during the day, too).
Sometimes I'd send my H in to pat his back or even rock him. If he was really hungry, he wouldn't settle and H would bring him to me.
He would NOT go back to sleep on his own in the middle of the night. He went down for bed awake with no problem, but MOTN was a different story. One night, DS1 (only 3) came wandering into our room at 3AM during a CIO attempt and said, "Mom, DS2 is crying and he needs you. Will you please go take care of him?" That was it for CIO for me! My poor 3 year old was worried about it & that wasn't worth it. From then on, my H would grab him when he woke up (around 4-5AM), I'd nurse him laying in my bed. When he was done nursing (frequently less than 5 min later), he'd roll over and tap my H and he would take him back to bed. It was adorable, and it was what worked for our family.

[t]

CIO worked for us with both girls around 9-10 months to cut out the MOTN feeding around 4am. DD2 was a bit stubborn and therefore it took a few days, but DD1 it took 10 minutes and she never woke again MOTN unless she was sick.

[mcfelix]

I need to do this with DD. She can sleep through the night but most night she wakes up around 3 or 4 and i nurse her so we can both go back to bed quickly. I was using a noise machine for myself for about a week so that her crying wouldn't wake me up, but the batteries died. I need to get new batteries so can work on that...

[soozy87]

We did it a little sooner with both kids (6 months and 5 months). With both of them we set a time that we would feed them after (normally 1:00 a.m.). We started giving him (and still do) a big bottle right before he goes to bed so we know he is not hungry. It didn't take long and he figured out how to put himself back to sleep. He wasn't crying because he was hungry he was crying because he couldn't connect sleep cycles. I hope something starts working for you guys more consistently!