How and When to Wean Baby from Night Feeding?

I stopped night feeding at about 3 to 4 months. He has been sleeping through the night since he was about 3 1/2 months old. Although he only self sooths maybe a couple of times but then he screams one of those ear piercing screams. He does it when he's hungry or needs a change and sometimes for his bingky. But my doctor told me just to use the bingky at night and if he screams put it back in and go to bed, if he keeps doing it ignore it. I do and he does fine. Usually he goes to bed between 7:30 and 8 and sleeps till about 5:30 when my husband goes to PT. Then he goes back to sleep until about 9 or 10.

You say he's "exclusively" breast-fed, does that mean he hasn't started on rice cereal or fruits or veggies yet? If he hasn't, he may be ready for it? I'm wondering if the increase in waking is hunger because now that he's bigger he may need a little more than breast-milk diet to get him through the night? My son was the same - wouldn't really take a bottle. We started supplementing with rice cereal around 4 months and gradually built up the solids from there. I still breast-fed until he was a year, but we had built up the solids so much by then, weaning just kind of happened naturally. Good luck!

The only time my boys did that was when they were teething, I guess nursing helped their gums feel better. With their last feeding of the night I would give them teething tablets or tylenol to help them sleep.

If he can get to sleep on his own, great! And if he does it after a full feeding, then he's probably legitimately hungry. When feeding requests suddenly increase I always say, "growth spurt!" You can choose to wean with some version of crying it out, or you can let him wean himself when he's ready. If it's any consolation from my experience, my first kid weaned himself of nighttime feedings around a year old and my second just gave up her 2:00am feeding at 17 months...so there *is* a natural end to it eventually. Personally, I survived with coffee. :)

Go with your motherly instincts here.

Your son is only 7.5 months old. Not only is he going through numerous growth spurts at this stage in his life (and will be for years to come) he's also simply....hungry.

My advice...feed him and don't make a big deal out of it. If you have to co-sleep again so that everyone in the house gets a decent night's sleep then so be it...you'll go back to your old sleeping habits soon enough.

Good luck.

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When my boys would wake at night I would wait 5 minutes to go in to see if they soothed on their own, and they almost always did. If they did not I tried to sooth without going straight to food. My boys both stopped night feedings just after 1 month old. They would go to bed at 8, wake and self sooth in under 5 a couple of times, and than wake to eat around 530. Your son is older, so I would start by trying to get him back to bed without food one or two times each night, maybe have hubby do it so nursing is not available, and slowly work from there.

You are going to need someone to help you with this. I finally got my son night weaned at 12 months. He co-sleeps so it was actually pretty easy. I started sleeping in another room and let him and my husband sleep together. When he woke at night his daddy would snuggle him close and they would go back to sleep. The first week he would cry for less than two minutes each time he woke up. After that he stopped crying at all when he wakes up in the middle of the night. It took about two months before I could sleep with him again without him "asking" to nurse in the middle of the night.

I had kinda the same issue with my son who is 18 months now. But mine was bottle fed we did nurse but i went back to work and my body didnt do will to that change so i only nursed about 9 weeks. he didnt sleep all night till about a year and the doc told me it was all habit and i was going to have to break it, and the only way to break it was to let him cry and so i did one night of almost a half hour cring and since that night he has slept all night. And yes the 1/2hour was hard but my son was getting up every two hours all night long on the dot. So i feel your pain........

It's normal for a breastfed baby to nurse throughout the night. There is so much physical and intellectual growth going on, they really need the nutrition. I know the sleep deprivation can be very taxing but it really doesn't last forever. Cosleeping does make it much easier. When you sleep next to your baby your sleep cycles get in sync so when he is waking, you are also waking from a lighter sleep, rather than being suddenly awoken out of deep sleep when the baby is sleeping away from you. It's understandable if you don't want to go back to it might be worth a try to see if it works better.

It is also normal for their sleep patterns to change every couple months as their development changes. Though if you've added solids, there could be intolerances complicating sleep. If he has any other symptoms of allergy, rashes, eczema, etc, you may want to consider that. Sometimes no matter what you do they will stretch out their sleep when they are good and ready.

But there are things you can try other than cry it out. Have you tried adding additional feeds before bed? Or make sure he isn't making up for fewer feeds during the day. As they get more active and mobile sometimes they end up eating less during the day and making up for it at night. If you are feeding a lot of solids before nursing, he may be filling up on less-nutritious solid food and needing the milk at night to make up for it.

I night weaned much older so I don't have personal experience that would be helpful but here is what pediatrician Jay Gordon has to say about night weaning. Though he doesn't recommend it until the baby is at least 12 months, it may be helpful. http://drjaygordon.com/attachment/sleeppattern.html