Infantreflux.org | How to end night nursing

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February 18, 2006 at 5:03 pm #1868

Anonymous
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My 10 month old is still waking one to three times a night to nurse. His reflux is better and isn’t waking crying anymore. The problem is that he’s at a stage where he wants to be independent during the day and will only nurse for naps or bedtime. He isn’t eating enough solids and won’t take a bottle. He takes a sippy cup sometimes, but only with rice milk in it, so I know he’s not getting enough calories during the day.

I’m exhausted and I want him to get more sleep at night. Instead, right now he’s only sleeping less than 10 hours a night and taking two big naps during the day. Is there a way to stop the night feedings so he’ll learn to eat more during the day and sleep more at night? Is there any other way to do this besides letting him CIO?

February 19, 2006 at 5:12 pm #1925

hellbennt
Keymaster

krista,

what I did was to send dh in at night- I made it just for 2 weeks- we just worked this time frame out in our ‘heads,’ but in all practicality it took MCUH less time than this!! (I nursed jonah at bedtime and then at 11pm, before I went to bed- he was sleeping, but he’d wake up enough to eat)- when jonah woke up from 11pm to let’s say 4:30am (you can decide what’s acceptable for you) then dh went in with a bottle of water- jonah was 8 and a half months at this time, so I sent dh in with a bottle- if he takes a cup or straw-sippy you could use this- whatever you think is best (just thought of that) and for the first night or 2, jonah took like 2 sips of water and then nestled up on dh’s shoulder and dh put him back in the crib- then after that, we knew he wasn’t hungry, so then instead of offering water, dh just gave him his pacifier (jonah is addicted- don’t know how your little one is) and cuddled him for a moment or 2 and got him back in the crib…this was our experiment to make sure that jonah wasn’t hungry or needing medicine because our next step was CIO- for you, this doesn’t have to be the next step- for you it could just be your goal for dh to get him back to sleep & for him to realize mama isn’t coming during a certain time frame and then he’ll make up the calories during the day…by 10 months he really could be getting all he needs in 3 feedings, I would think, bcse I was working my way down to just 2 feedings by 12 months…hope this makes sense?

~laura

February 19, 2006 at 7:20 pm #1931

Anonymous
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Hi krista, you could try looking at the ‘No cry sleep solution for toddlers and preschoolers’ by Elizabeth Pantley. She has a very gentle approach to dealing with all kind of sleep issues, including night weaning. You do have to be prepared to say ‘no’ to your little one, and having someone else like a dp or dh around does help because sometimes (especially when you are tired) it is so easy for mum to just feed them again as you know it will calm them down. But there are some really good ideas in the book and it’s just up to you to select which ones feel okay and devise your own plan. You don’t have to use cry-it-out if it doesn’t seem right for you.

But just be aware, with refluxers it very much might be that they are still hungry through the night because they can’t take in enough to get them through a good 12 hours – I’m glad Laura’s experiment worked but it’s important that she did that before trying the cio. My little one is 19 months now and still feeds at night, he’s happy to have dad or someone else looking after him but he still needs food – I’ve been away for him for two separate nights now and both times he had to be fed snacks when he woke up!!

Having said that he still feeds at night, I did use Elizabeth Pantley’s methods to stop feeds at bedtime, so I know he doesn’t associate going to sleep with the breast any more, so we don’t have any problems with dad or other relatives looking after him at bedtime or night time. Just this little change has made a big difference because it gives me a break now and again and I know I can go away for a whole night if I feel like it.

I hope this helps

Sam

February 20, 2006 at 10:15 am #1968

Anonymous
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Thanks to both of you.

I have the No Cry Sleep Solution, but hadn’t looked at it in quite a while. I used her suggestions to stop him from nursing to sleep and then put it away.

My problem with Taylor is that he seems to take in most of his calories from nursing still and he only wants to nurse in his quite room, in the dark, before he goes to sleep. He isn’t falling to sleep on me, but is used to nursing then. If I try to nurse him somewhere else in the house, he won’t do it. He’s too distracted and wants to play. He’ll take a cup but usually only if I’m not in arms reach or if he’s starved. Also, he only likes to feed himself with the cup, so it will be interesting to see how he does if his daddy goes in at night with it. The other problem is that he associates daddy with play time…. But it is definitely worth a try since we’re also trying to wean him from the breast now anyways.

Thanks for your suggestions!

February 20, 2006 at 5:05 pm #2009

hellbennt
Keymaster

kpcallen wrote:

he seems to take in most of his calories from nursing still and he only wants to nurse in his quite room, in the dark, before he goes to sleep. He isn’t falling to sleep on me, but is used to nursing then.

I would keep this ‘main’ nursing session (before sleep) and then try daddy for any others that happen later than this one, as it seems he needs the calories from this one…keep us posted!

~laura

February 24, 2006 at 4:40 pm #2381

Anonymous
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I have also consulted with Eliz. Pantley’s book and can say that the ideas are great. Like Sam, we also have a situation where my lo isn’t fully comfortable in the night and needs the nursing or snack with his reflux. It’s important to make sure the reflux is really under control and that he isn’t waking from reflux related discomfort before trying these ideas. Good luck!

February 24, 2006 at 4:46 pm #2384

Anonymous
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Sam,

I don’t mean to hijack this post, but saw your info on nursing at night and getting your lo off of nursing to sleep….we are having issues with this and I was wondering what worked for you? My lo nurses mostly to sleep at naptime and bedtime and then wakes several times a night with reflux discomfort and also often wakes during naps and will nurse back down. I have the No Cry Sleep Solution, but thought it would be nice to ask a mom dealing with reflux, too, how you did things. I’ve never let him CIO and don’t really agree with the philosophy– until I know that he’s fully physically comfortable– and we still aren’t there yet. When he’s teething or sick, there is a lot more nursing going on, but on his best days when there isn’t the teething issue, he’s eating lots of solids, so I know this isn’t a calorie intake issue for us. Any thoughts you have would be GREAT.

He’s 17 mos and I’m patient, but very tired a lot of the time and would love not to have to be the one to always put him to sleep. I’ve also given snacks at night cause he is so uncomfortable, but he still needs to nurse to get back to sleep. Is it possible that we could get to where someone else can give a snack and he can go back to sleep on his own? THis seems too good to be true!

February 25, 2006 at 3:29 pm #2479

Anonymous
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Hi Anne, I have to say that I have just fed Paolo to sleep tonight, but my excuse is that he has a bad cold and and eye infection too, so not the happiest of boys at the moment. As so many mums of reflux babies seem to find, colds, teething or any little thing can make the reflux so much worse. So you can see that really I’m just muddling along with things as much as anyone else.

However, I’m happy to share my approaches that meant I did manage to have a couple of nights off. Basically, I used the Pantley pull-off, distancing myself physically from him, using a key word to indicate the end of a nursing session (which didn’t really help), changing our bedtime routine, saying ‘no’ and finally getting dp in on the act. Here’s how it went:

1. The Pantley pull-off is described in her books, but basically involves taking them off the breast as soon as you feel they have stopped feeding and are just ‘comfort sucking’. If they protest, you try to gently dissuade them but let them back on if you feel it’s right. This was all I did for a while. He was still feeding at bedtime and sleeping in our bed with us.

2. I then introduced a phrase to indicate the end of a nursing session – finished, bye bye breasts, which Paolo adopted (i.e. copied) very happily but not to mean what I had intended, his meaning was just ‘finished with that breast for now, may come back to it at any moment’. So I gave up with that!!

3. I started to distance myself from him. I didn’t sleep with him propped up on me or with my arm tucked round him so much. This helped quite a bit as i realised that sometimes when he made a noise he wasn’t necessarily awake and didn’t actually need feeding. Later on I moved him into his own room for bedtime, and this worked very well. This was after I’d changed the bedtime routine.

4. I introduced a feed earlier in the bedtime routine, and not in the bedroom. So I fed him after he’d come out of the bath, still with the lights on and before we went to bed for a story, song and lights out. This really helped because if he wanted to feed at bedtime I knew he wasn’t actually hungry.

5. At the same time as the change in the routine, I started saying ‘no, mummy’s breasts are tired, they are going to sleep too’. This was really difficult at first but as I said before, I knew that he wasn’t hungry because he’d only very recently fed. I also had a drink and a snack in the bedroom to offer him, and I said he could have a cuddle if he wanted. He did protest terribly at first, but it didn’t take as long as you might imagine (only a few evenings) before he was used to going to bed without nursing. After that, I started to try to say no in the middle of the night too. I decided to leave in the feed at 11pm ish (just before I go to bed) but identify a time up to which I wouldn’t feed – just as Laura said earlier. At first this was only midnight, I think, but then I tried to push it further and further. This was really difficult and I basically got stuck at around 3 am. I decided that he really was hungry by this point, so I wouldn’t try to push it any more.

6. I then enlisted dp to do ‘night duty’ for a few nights running. This was because I’d already booked to go away with my sister and I wanted to try it out with dp beforehand. Dp had already started doing bedtimes occasionally, so that wasn’t a big concern, but I wanted to know they could both manage with nights. It was hard to lie in bed hearing Paolo crying and trying not to get up and interfere. As I said in an earlier post, Paolo was definitely hungry in the middle of the night. The only way dp could get him to settle was to take him down to the kitchen and offer him snacks! But after that he did go back to sleep.

So by the time I came to go away with my sister, I knew that I hadn’t just been pandering to him in the night, he did seem to still need night feeds. But then I also knew he would manage with just dp looking after him. I’ve also been away with dp, and dp’s sister looked after him. He woke up at 11.30 for snacks and after that she had him in bed with her. Apparently at one point he woke up and said ‘tortilla now’, so she rolled over to get a bit of tortilla for him, and by the time she’d rolled back he was asleep again . He was asking for me a lot in the morning and definitely made up for it by feeding voraciously the whole of the next day, but at least dp and I got one night together with no interruptions.

I should say that the Pantley book I have is the toddler and preschooler one, not the baby one – I’ve found this one more useful, although I don’t have both to hand to compare exactly.

Also, Paolo goes to a day nursery two half-days a week and occasionally a full day, so I already knew he could cope with up to 10 hours away from me in the daytime and it was really only the nighttime that I was worried about. He’d stopped taking expressed breast milk from anyone, so although I expressed and left milk on both occasions, it wasn’t used.

The only other thing I could suggest is that you look at the timings of Lucas’s medications – I’m sure there are useful posts on these forums – to see if changing them slightly might mean he sleeps for longer, in the early part of the night at least. I have often felt that Paolo might be better if I gave him one dose of Losec at about midnight, but just can’t bring myself to get up and prepare it if he’s sleeping anyway. But I do give him a dose half an hour before teatime, in the hope that it will switch off those proton pumps for part of the night at least.

February 26, 2006 at 1:01 am #2511

Anonymous
Inactive

My goodness, you are so helpful! THANK YOU so much for all the informative thoughts! I didn’t even realize that Pantley had a toddler book, I’ll get it right away. How old was Paolo when you were doing all this? Lucas is 17 mos and had ALWAYS nursed to sleep. I guess one day it will have to stop …so I might as well begin preparing all of us for doing it as gently as possible. It just seems too good to be true, but I can really see the merit in your ideas. And it’s interesting to me that you were also co-sleeping, as we are. I have started sleeping farther away from him in bed and that has helped a lot on his good nights. He still has lots of bad nights, though, (last night was one) where he wakes throughout the night nad can only sleep arched over my body or with my arm under him next to me. So, I may not quite be at the “in his own room” stage, but I’m definitely wanting this to be a comfortable transition, and wanting to discourage the nursing to sleep everytime thing. We’ve looked into all different ways of doing his meds and he does get a ppi (zegerid) before bed, and I even tried giving it in the middle of the night, but nothing really seems to change his nights with the schedule of the ppi. We also use Mylanta if things are really bad in the middle of the night. I feel like his hiatal hernia can really keep things unpredictable and add to that the teething, etc. and you know how it goes.

Again, thank you so much. Your Paolo sounds cute, I love the tortilla story!

February 26, 2006 at 10:22 am #2517

Anonymous
Inactive

Anne – Taylor has been sleeping better during the past week, only waking once to nurse and I think I can contribute it to his (and my) diet. We finally learned that he is allergic to wheat, so we’ve both been off of it. I also have noticed that he seems to have a sensitivity to milk, so we’re avoiding that too. Since being off of both, his sleep has been much better.

I see that you’re on the elim. diet. Maybe you’ll find an answer soon. It was SO hard for me.

One other thing I tried was making his crib sort of like a play pin, with some animals, pacifiers and books in there. He has woken up a few times and just played, then gone back to sleep on his own. Don’t get me wrong, it took some time to get there (way more than just this week). (And let me make the note that we waited until we felt he was old enough to put the stuffed animals in his crib, so he wouldn’t sufficate.)

I think, just like Pantley says in her book over and over again, that getting them to sleep on their own takes a lot of time. If we wanted to make it happen quickly, we’d let them CIO. Like you, I wasn’t ready to do that. When I was ready for Taylor to be in his crib, and not in bed with me, I just kept putting him in there every time after he’d wake up. For a few nights, we went through many night wakings, but he got used to it and now won’t sleep anywhere else.

Good luck!

February 28, 2006 at 10:47 pm #2731

Anonymous
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Read The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. There are a lot of ways to help a baby sleep through the night without crying it out. But one thing you could try is shortening the nursing sessions a little each night until they are nonexistent, and just cuddling him as much as possible to ease the discomfort. Emmy2006-2-28 22:48:57
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