Life after night weaning?

[halojedha]

What is life after night weaning like? Parents, paint me a picture. Particularly interested if you still all share a family bed, although maybe night weaning will be the thing that enables us to transition E to their own bed.

I really like being able to soothe them instantly. On nights when I'm woken twice or three times and each time I can roll over, nurse and pretty much go straight back to sleep, it works really well. I like the cuddles and closeness and the security of knowing I can get them back to sleep whatever.

Here's what's not working:
- they have sixteen teeth and their latch is often bad, especially at night. No matter how many times I take them off and adjust them I just can't get them to open their mouth wide and tilt their head back enough. I end up with toothmarks, nursing aversion and sore nipples. Plus the irritation keeps me awake.

- sometimes trying to adjust their latch stresses them out and they get into a proper tizzy. Twice we've had night terrors this way.

- the roaming tickly twiddly fingers under my clothes and over my skin. It's irritating and overstimulating and leaves me touched out and unable to stand normal breastfeeding even when the latch is better. Also intensifies nursing aversion. I have to constantly defend myself, which makes them more insistent, and then we're both awake.

- when they have a sniffly nose, which has happened a few times lately, they can't latch on. They want to suck on my nipple (with a very lazy latch), then breathe cold air over my nipple, then latch on even worse and have one more suck. It drives me mad. There's no way I can negotiate a decent latch if they can't breathe through their nose.

- chronic exhaustion and sleep deprivation. I get woken up to feed between 2-10 times per night. Towards the end of the night sometimes the feeds are back to back and I don't get a chance to sleep inbetween. If I need to pee I have to wait until they've finished nursing and gone to sleep. And then sometimes they wake up wailing 1min later cos I'm not there and I have to nurse them back to sleep again. If there's something worrying me or stressing me (which hello, pandemic) sometimes once I'm woken in the night I can't get back to sleep, even if E does, and end up lying awake for hours. When I do get back to sleep after 2-3hours, I'm woken soon after to feed them again.

- When they're wiggly, it disturbs my sleep. Even if they're sleeping.

- breastfeeding aversion. Happens every month when my period is due and other times too, when the above problems are going on. It's an indescribably horrible feeling.

- I'm trying to do consent based parenting, but lying there gritting my teeth and disassociating while my body is retraumatised by unwanted nipple touch is not consent based.

- I want an unbroken night's sleep. I want Leo to do a night shift without me. I want my parents to be able to take E overnight once covid permits so Leo and I can have a night off together.

They're 20 months old. I was vaguely thinking of doing natural term breastfeeding but also interested in honouring my own boundaries.

My fear if we night wean is that it won't actually result in more sleep overall, because we'll no longer have the insta-soothe (well mostly) option and we'll have to get them back to sleep the long way round.

So what's it like? ATM E wakes up next to me and says "booby milk" and sleepy nuzzles into my front and latches in. Sometimes I have to get my boob out, sometimes it was already out from last time. Sometimes I have to shufty them across or down the bed into a better position. Then sometimes they go almost straight back to sleep, sometimes I go almost straight back to sleep, and sometimes I lie peacefully until they're done and then go straight back to sleep and don't really remember it. Other times the above things happen. The whole thing usually happens lying down with my eye mask on and no talking or mental stimulation to wake my brain up and disrupt my getting back to sleep ability.

What's it like without booby milk?

Comments

[shreena]

We haven't really coslept - I wasn't averse to it but both of my babies didn't really get on with it, they found it too overstimulating so I can't speak to that but we did night wean.

For both of mine, there was a lot of crying for the first night, some crying for the second and then it was fine.

The practicalities: with Arjun who is directly breastfed (Jovan had expressed milk because cleft palate), I went away for two nights (locally so came back first thing in the morning) and Ben would sooth him overnight, cuddles, strokes, that kind of thing. By night 3, he was sleeping through and has done ever since so I put him to sleep in his room and then see him again the next morning.

I would guess that I think it's incredibly hard to night wean and continue to cosleep, E will find it super hard to be able to see and smell the boobs.

[halojedha]

So you did it all at once?

Thanks for this, really useful to hear different experiences - although of course every child is different. I'm not sure whether to stop night feeds gently or all at once. (All at once is very tempting right now!) and whether to do new bed at the same time, or keep the cuddles and cosleeping. E has always been a light sleeper and wanting lots of touch and comfort at night so we might not have much luck with their own bed. It's hard to know if they're waking up for comfort, or waking up for milk. I guess we'll just have to pick something and try it.

[shreena]

All at once was best for us because neither child had a real pattern so it wasn't like we could drop the 10pm and keep the 2am or whatever, they waking at random.

I also felt like dropping feeds was confusing and would make him think that if he waited and cried, boob would appear.

I think the most important thing is to commit to an approach for at least a few days. It will involve at least some crying and you need to feel comfortable and confident. Your wellbeing matters.

[halojedha]

Thank you. I've definitely reached the point of no return. We did a first night with me in the spare room and Leo on shift last night. Result: two hours of sleep, lots of crying. Kind of as expected but still sucks. Leo's now sleeping it off, and I've been doing three hours of on/off nursing and napping ... and counting. Do you think it's okay to give them as much milk as they want during the day? I'm a bit concerned we're just going to flip them from sleeping on the boob at night to sleeping on the boob during the day...

[shreena]

I would incline to let them have milk and more daytime sleep than usual but try to make sure that they get a good stretch of awake time leading up to bedtime. Outside time also important for sleep later.

Good luck! Night 3 is usually a lot better for most so not long to go.

[halojedha]

Yes, agree re importance of outside time! We're hanging in there. Not relishing the thought of tonight - it's SO hard making choices which will upset them so much - but hopefully it's very temporary!

[juliet]

L night weaned at my instigation when he was just past 3 (when I got to the point where I was too fed up with it). We talked beforehand about the milks going to sleep at night now, but there were definitely a few nights of him being deeply unenthusiastic about it all. I *think* it actually worked better for us for me to do it (I was still co-sleeping with him) as when doop tried he got upset about me not being there AS WELL AS upset about milk, but some people find the other way around. I kept repeating that the milks were asleep now, and offered water and a biscuit (in case he really was hungry, and also, biscuit was soothing). I'll see if I can find in my diary how long that lasted.

We carried on co-sleeping until he was 5, and he carried on waking up every few hours. I think by the time he was 4 or so doop was co-sleeping with him sometimes instead of me though? (we had a big mattress on the floor in L's room) The biscuit/water stopped happening at some point? He was generally OK to get back to sleep with cuddling after the initial transition, and it didn't usually take too long. But weaning didn't stop him waking; that only happened as he got older. Until we finished co-sleeping when he was 5 he was still waking at least a couple of times a night, but that stopped dead when he moved into his own bed! (In retrospect I wonder if we could have done that earlier but it took quite a lot of convincing and an exciting New Bed In The Sky (cabin bed) when we managed it so I suspect not.)

I carried on feeding him for about 6 months after that though -- by then he was only rarely feeding in the daytime, but we kept doing milk at bedtime and on waking up, until he weaned himself at about 3y10.

[juliet]

Update: the Leon-book says night-weaning went "fairly smoothly"; it did also mention that we'd been talking about night-weaning for a while before that which may have helped. It also said that waking went down from 3-4 times a night to around once a night (he would call me between 1am and 5am and I'd go in then). So that's better than I remembered. He was still waking for the day around 5.30 at that point; that gradually got better with age.

A friend of mine who's a single parent night-weaned around 2 and carried on co-sleeping for years, so it's definitely possible to do it that way even without the assistance of a non-bf parent.

[halojedha]

Thank you, that's useful and reassuring! Good to know it's possible to stop breastfeeding but not cosleeping at least in theory - there's a chance that'll be the best compromise between everyone's needs, so good to have it as an option. Less night waking would be a massive improvement - but even if the number of wakings are the same, I won't have to do every single one myself any more!

[juliet]

You can also give things a go and if it seems like weaning is worse right now than keeping on going, you can stop trying and have another go in a couple of months. I have a vague recollection that at one point (maybe around age 2?) we tried doop doing some of L's night wakings (ie without milk) and it Did Not Go Well, enough so that we decided to delay it for a bit.

My personal feeling re the own bed / weaning issue above is that if E is used to being with you and needs that comfort, trying to do both sleeping alone *&* night-weaning at the same time is very likely to be too much change for them all at once. Trying to do night feeds during the transition into a separate bed sounds a bit of a nightmare tbh so maybe try with the co-sleeping first? Or just move you out for a few nights during the transition and leave Leo to wrangle E? (As above that was harder for us not easier, but children vary!)

[halojedha]

We've gone for the moving me out and leaving Leo approach, which has hard for everyone. E only got a couple of hours sleep and now seems set to spend the whole day catching up on the boob. Which wasn't quite the aim of the exercise...

[juliet]

I hope it gets easier. It is fairly common for night weaning to lead to at least a short-term increase in daytime feeding unfortunately -- daytime latch is often better though and once you're getting more sleep it may be easier to deal with everything overall?

[halojedha]

Yeah, more feeding is expected and fine, a 6 hour sleep on me from 7am would have just felt like delaying bedtime rather than changing it, if that makes sense! But it didn't happen, they nursed and napped on and off for 3 hours before getting up and wanting to start their day. I really hope this works!