But by the time baby was around 10 months old I was getting frustrated with being the all-night snack bar (plus baby was getting very fidgety), so I started putting baby back in the cot at night after falling asleep.
I was hoping baby would magically start to sleep better before putting the cot in baby’s bedroom so I wouldn’t have to stumble out to another room several times a night. A few weeks later I rang Tresillian advice line who told me the first step would be to move that cot out right away! They said that baby and I were simply waking each other up all night.
So I moved the cot. The meant getting up when baby cried, nursing back to sleep, putting baby in the cot and returning to bed myself. I would give an 11pm ‘dreamfeed’, then be up again at 2am, 4am, 6am and 7am.
The problem was that I couldn’t just cuddle baby back to sleep. Baby wanted to breastfeed whenever I came in to the room. I rang the Australian Breastfeeding Association who told me you don’t need to feed milk at night – just offer water. I don’t know what age it’s appropriate for baby to go all night without feeding, but the ABA is pretty helpful in this regard (ph 1800 686 2 686).
WEANING AT NIGHT - SLOWLY DOES IT
Having moved baby into the nursery, we then agreed to embark on a 4-week training plan (very slow, I know, but we were waiting for the Christmas break for the final steps). We wrote up the plan and put it on the fridge to remind us when we would make the next change:
Phase 1: Extending the no-feed time
- Put baby to sleep at night with the usual routine (bath or shower, storytime, bed)
- Dreamfeed at your bedtime (eg 10 or 11pm)
- If baby wakes before a certain pre-agreed time (eg 2am), your partner settles the baby, offering only water to drink
- From then on you settle the baby as normal
- Gradually increase the pre-agreed no-feed time over a number of days or weeks. We eventually extended to 6am and dropped the dreamfeed at 11pm. This will mean that the partner probably has to go bed much earlier than usual, so they’re not too tired the next day. Tough it out for a couple of weeks! It’s better than a sleep-deprived mum driven to the edge of sanity.
Phase 2: No picking up
This final phase requires your partner to take baby for the whole night for a couple of weeks. We waited until the Christmas holidays so my partner could sleep in late in the morning. Or your partner could go to bed even earlier. Hopefully the pain comes with some gain…
- Put baby to bed as usual
- If baby wakes before morning (eg. 6am), your partner does all the settling, offering water to baby if they’re thirsty
- Try not picking up baby unless the crying really ramps up (as per ‘Sleep Training for Naps’ above). This is really hard when you know the easiest way to resettle is just to cuddle them back to sleep. But remember, you’re trying to train the baby to resettle themselves without needing milk or cuddling
- You might also consider dropping the dreamfeed (if you think baby is ready - refer to the Australian Breastfeeding Association for further information on this).
OTHER OPTIONS FOR NIGHT WEANING - CAMPING OUT
An alternative (quicker method) to all of the above is to just go cold turkey rather than slowly extending the no-feed times. This may mean your partner ‘camps’ in the baby’s bedroom next to the cot, without picking up baby and just offering water in a bottle. Keep shh-ing, patting the cot, holding baby’s hand or whatever it takes. Slightly different to controlled crying in that you’re right there to comfort baby, but it’s certainly harsher than slowly extending the no-feed time.
Another option, which a friend of mine tried, is to simply stop feeding baby at night. She cuddled him to sleep while wearing a full bra and shirt. He took a long time to settle every time he woke up, but she just kept holding and cuddling him until he fell asleep. Because the nights were long and tiring, she alternated some nights with her partner so she could get some nights off.
EXTENDING THE MORNING SLEEP-IN
We found it fairly easy to train baby to keep sleeping a bit longer in the morning. When baby wakes up at, say, 5 or 6am act exactly the same as you would if it was 2am. Give a feed, put baby in cot and go back to bed. Usually mine wanted to play with toys but would fall back asleep again within a couple of minutes.
The trick to this is to have a set time (ours was 7am), when you make ‘waking up’ a big event. Throw open the curtains to let some light in, say a big hello and play some fun games. Tough when you’re still sleepy, but we found this worked over the course of a couple of weeks and stayed effective for a long time.
If it was only five minutes to 7am, we would keep baby in the cot until the right time was reached, then make the big wake-up. If grizzling ensued before then, we would just keep trying to resettle in the darkened room or bring baby to our bed for a quiet snuggle.
