Claire on Christmas morning, about a week into the process of night weaning.
I decided to focus on physical health first not only because it’s a venerable January tradition, but also because it’s part of the foundation that all other elements of self-discipline build upon. In Maslow’s pyramid of self-actualization, physical health falls into the wide “physiological health and safety” category at the base of the pyramid. It’s pretty hard to feel zen when you’re hungry, and difficult to be patient when you’re sleep-deprived after your toddler wanted to nurse all night.
Ok, Let’s Talk About Toddlers and Sleep…
When I was pregnant, the one thing I dreaded about caring for a newborn was the sleep deprivation. And it was true that I didn’t sleep much when my babies were little, but I was expecting that. What I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that sleep disruption would continue on through toddlerhood and the preschool years. According to Dr. Elizabeth Pantley in The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers, this pattern is totally normal. Almost half of all parents of toddlers and preschoolers are awoken by their children at least once per night.
After researching and reading about night weaning a couple of months ago, I decided to begin the process the week before Christmas. I began by cutting out nursing sessions between 11pm and 4am, replacing them with co-sleeping cuddles and two statements, “Na-na (nursing) is sleeping now.” and “We’ll have na-na again in the morning.” After the first 10 days, I stopped nursing her if she woke up between bedtime and 11pm. She still nurses to sleep and between 4-7am.
Even though Claire doesn’t talk much, she does understand most of what we say, and I’m sure she understood what I was saying. One night Tom woke up to Claire crying and he sat up in bed and calmly said, “Claire, please stop crying now. It’s time to go to sleep.” She took a deep breath, flopped down on the bed and went back to sleep. I was astounded!
Is Night Weaning Really About Self-Discipline?
I know that night-weaning appears to be more about changing my child’s behaviour than my own, but I see it as a positive step towards my own playful self-discipline in a few ways.
- Night weaning was an assertive action I took to ensure my own needs for rest are met. If I’m not feeling confident about something I tend to be either too passive or too aggressive, but night weaning felt like a calm, considered, respectful move that wasn’t wishy washy or full of angry feelings. Claire had some big feelings about not nursing at night, especially during nights 3-7 or so, when she realized something was up but hadn’t fully processed it yet, but I did my best to stay calm and help her through this transition.
- I had to de-program myself as much as I had to teach Claire a new way of falling asleep at night. I had come to rely on nursing as a cue to help me go to sleep, and the first few nights I found it hard to get to sleep myself, even after Claire had fallen asleep.
- Now that Claire has mostly learned that we cuddle back to sleep instead of nursing, it takes some discipline to remember that myself when I’m awoken from a deep sleep. Sticking with the plan and being consistent requires willpower and self-awareness.
It’s hard to feel playful in a fun and games sense about implementing changes to a toddler’s sleep routine. In many ways night weaning doesn’t seem like a playful thing at all – Claire did some crying, I had a few nights where I slept even worse than usual, and a couple of times I doubted whether I’d made the right decision.
In the end I think it was the right time for us to night wean, and that it was a playfully self-disciplined choice. Night weaning was an experiment I was willing to take a chance on. It felt like the right thing to do at the right time, but if Claire had responded with truly anguished and prolonged screaming instead of a relatively short period of cranky fussing I’d have called it off and tried again in a few months. My choice to night wean was motivated by my own needs and the needs and abilities of my nursing toddler – I didn’t feel pressured to night wean because someone else thought it would be a good idea.
The other half of this coin is, of course, getting to bed on time myself so that I can wake up well rested. It’s no good to take night nursing out of the equation and shortchange myself on sleep anyway by staying up too late.
Now that I’m sleeping a little better, I’m hoping to have more energy and patience for dealing with other challenges!
Have you night weaned a toddler? How did it go? How is your sleep now? I’d love to hear about it!
I'm Michelle Carchrae, the mama in the vortex. I'm glad you're here!
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I had never thought about reprogramming myself! I too had trouble getting to sleep when I stopped nursing number one to sleep, but never made the connection. Great article, thank you!
When I night weaned my older boy, I too found that one of the most difficult parts was actually remembering that myself when I was woken up during the night. I was so used to responding to cries with nursing that it was hard to respond differently while half-asleep.
It took us a couple attempts, but I could tell when he was ready to night wean. It was different than the first attempt or two, where the crying was heartbroken and hysterical.
Cynthia´s last [type] ..Welcome 2011!
Yes, we had one earlier attempt at changing up the night time routine, in which Tom tried to cuddle Claire to sleep with a sippy cup. She was most definitely NOT OKAY with that, but this time she was kinda cranky and confused but ready to make a change.
We nightweaned our beautiful babe at 16 months, which was about 4 weeks ago. We used the method suggested by Jay Gordon, as several friends had recommend it based on it’s gentle and respectful approach to the needs of both children and parents. On retrospect, I think it was such a success because we timed it so well – all three of us were ready for this next stage. The munchkin still feeds anytime up to 11pm, and then again anytime after 6am. I’ve been surprised at just how quickly he picked up on the new routine. He still occasionally wakes in the night and asks for “su su”, but is ok with it when I say “Not now, we’ll have su su again in the morning”. I came down with a tummy bug yesterday, and was so grateful that I could look forward to at least 7 hours of solid sleep to help me recover!
That’s great! I’m looking forward to the time Claire sleeps right through from 11pm to 4am – even though she doesn’t nurse between those times she does still wake up and need some reassurance before she’ll fall back asleep. It is definitely easier to recover from an illness when you’re getting some solid sleep.
I night-weaned my kids when they were old enough to really understand what I was saying and have some sense of empathy and of future time. I’d tell them that mama was too tired to nurse, but promised that we would in the morning. We’d cuddle and I’d whisper sweet words of love to them and I’d ask if they wanted me to sing one of our bed-time songs. There was some whimpering, but fairly quick falling back to sleep in my arms. I think the longest it took was a couple weeks and then they were for the most part night-weaned (excepting special circumstances like being sick.)
my daughter is 16 months and completely addicted to ‘booby’. not just for milk…but mainly comfort sucking to go to sleep. we bedshare..and everytime she wakes up in the middle of the night, she needs booby to go back to sleep. she doesnt know how to do it on her own. and if i dont give it to her right away, she cries and becomes very upset (bc she never had to go to sleep on her own so she only knows sucking as a way to fall asleep). i can not latch her off until she is fast asleep. so if she goes to bed before me, and i am eating dinner or watching a movie and she wakes up, i have go into the bedroom and let her suck until she falls back to a sound sleep…which can take up to 30 minutes sometimes. and if we are in bed together and she wakes up i will give her the boob and sometimes we both fall asleep while she sucks…this results in kinked neck for mommy and a few times she bit down (bc she was in a deep sleep) which was awful bc i couldnt nurse her from that boob until it healed and i had to pump it instead bc it would get too full.
all this being said, it is difficult at times and very time consuming to lay there as she sucks, but i know that motherhood is about being selfless. she would not/will not take the pacifier or bottle EVER. i feel now that she is getting older and so smart…like she should be able to put her self to sleep now. but when i have tried the jay gordons nighttime weaning approach (ok i tired it only 2 times) it resulted in her screaming and crying and FREAKING out). but sometimes i feel like a bad person that i never taught her how to sleep on her own. i dont want her to be reliant on my boob to fall asleep until she is like 3…i feel that a 2-3 year old has the mentality to fall asleep on their own and to stifle them from that would not be cool. and daddy had never put her to sleep (he works and i dont) and he is the ‘fun guy’…she gets giggly and hyper around him — so when her attemtped the other ngiht to put her back to sleep, she became super awake and ended up being up for like 3 hours and i finally got her back to sleep around 5 am!
so my question is, with such a booby addicted child, will she ever NOT scream and cry when i attempt to cuddle her back to sleep, instead of have her suck, in the middle of the night?
Hi Elora
At 16 months, being “addicted” to nursing is totally normal. In fact, I wouldn’t call it being addicted, or anything else with a negative connotation. She’s just a young toddler and hasn’t yet developed to the point of being able to soothe herself without the help of nursing. That’s normal! Both my girls were like this. I totally hear you about it being frustrating – I remember well those days of not being able to watch a show in one sitting because I was up and down to nurse the baby (or toddler) back to sleep. But it does pass. As she gets older she’ll be more and more able to be soothed in other ways, and by other people.
If you really want to have a few attachment-friendly techniques to try, check out Elizabeth Pantley’s book The No-Cry Sleep Solution. Her toddler specific book is good too. We worked on the “Pantley pull-off” with reasonable success.
Another thing I did to make nursing to sleep more comfortable for me (because I figured that if I was going to do it I might as well be comfortable!) was to nurse her to sleep in a big bed. (we had an extra double bed that we used instead of a crib) I brought a pillow and blanket for myself, just in case I did fall asleep. You can take the pillow away with you when you leave the bed if you’re worried about the risk of suffocation, but at 16 months most toddlers are strong and mobile enough to move themselves to a position with better airflow. Then I could nurse without the cricked neck!
good luck!
Elora I could have written your reply! I have a 14 m,month old who is exactly the same, sleeps for boob and nothing else (she’ll doze off in the sling or the care but wake if moved). Her daddy has never been able to settle her to sleep because I’d she doesn’t get boob she has as proper melt down. I wish us both luck!
I am crying as I read your post! I have been so frustrated my almost 17 month little girl is addicted to the boob. I am so ready to wean. We co sleep and I have been told by everyone the only way to wean her is to put her in her crib and let her cry it out! I attempted this one night at 9 months old and it was traumatic for both of us. I am cranky and run down all the time and I can tell Abby isn’t getting good sleep either. I feel like the worst mommy ever! I have tried the telling her bow bow is gone and can have it in the morning and she screams for hours in hysterics. Daddy can’t help she becomes hysteric with him to. Then ends up being up all night! I don’t know what else to try I just know that I could be a better mommy if I wasn’t exhausted all the time.
Hi Laura – it is so frustrating to not be able to get a good sleep, I totally feel where you are coming from! Nursing a toddler is so different from nursing a newborn, and by 17 months in it can feel like you’re going backwards instead of forwards towards better sleep when your little one is still nursing a lot at night.
It’s interesting for me to look back at this post and remember where we were then. Claire is almost 4 now, (!) and sleeps through the night consistently. So if anything, it does get better! But I also remember that this first round of night weaning was more difficult than I made it seem in this post. Yes, we had several weeks where we didn’t nurse between 10pm and 5am, or something like that. But we went back to nursing through the night a couple of months later when Claire was sick and waking constantly and nursing was the only thing that helped. After that we were back in the habit of nursing a couple of times through the night again, until we night weaned again in the early fall and weaned completely in November, when she was 2 1/2.
There are so many reasons why your little one is waking to nurse frequently at 17 months old. Toddlers often go through a phase of nursing less during the day and then nursing more at night to make up for it. Toddlers are also stretching their boundaries a lot and being more independent, but emotionally they still need a lot of comforting, and nursing is usually the most preferred way of being comforted. During toddlerhood I started nursing my girls down to sleep in the spare bed (which was a double), so they would at least start the night sleeping alone in their own bed. Then we would co-sleep the rest of the night after the first waking after I’d gone to bed.
If night weaning really isn’t working out for you guys, it’s OK to take a break, go back to nursing on demand and try again in a few months. At that age a couple of months of development can make a huge difference to a toddler’s emotional development and she might be more ready to be comforted by other things in a little while.
good luck!
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