Night weaning a 2yr 9m old?!

[Angelbabymama]

Heeeeeeeelllllpppppp!

I'm 6 months pregnant at the moment and would love to have him night weaned before baby #2 arrives. I'm so scared of causing lasting damage from trauma as he will just cry and cry for it in the night no matter what I do. I don't even have any milk left!! 😱😩

Has anyone successfully night weaned a very booby toddler with as little emotional trauma as possible? Xx

 

[Kanichen34]

Sadly I don't think there is an easy way. But I just night weaned my 18 month old and was expecting ww3 - and it wasn't too bad. I just told her the milk was all gone, she'd drunk it all earlier and it was time to sleep. She cried but after a few mins would typically give in and allow me to rock her back to sleep. Since doing it within a few weeks she's started to sleep through a few nights a week - so it was definitely worth the pain. And I'd say in your case worth doing it sooner rather than later otherwise he could start demanding it again when he knows you're getting up to feed a newborn?

 

[Matilda85]

I found the book 'nursies when the sun shines' to be really useful when we might weaned our little man at 20 months. He really seemed to grasp the concept well, but initially did feed more during the day to make up for it i think.

 

[Larkspur]

Sadly I don't think there is an easy way. But I just night weaned my 18 month old and was expecting ww3 - and it wasn't too bad. I just told her the milk was all gone, she'd drunk it all earlier and it was time to sleep. She cried but after a few mins would typically give in and allow me to rock her back to sleep. Since doing it within a few weeks she's started to sleep through a few nights a week - so it was definitely worth the pain. And I'd say in your case worth doing it sooner rather than later otherwise he could start demanding it again when he knows you're getting up to feed a newborn?

I should just warn you that this might happen anyway. There's often a sleep regression when the new baby arrives, regardless of whether the toddler is STTN or not. Don't want to scare you, just to prepare you!

Can you get him off to sleep any other way except nursing down? I don't mean refuse to nurse him, but can you nurse him and then put him in the cot/bed awake and rub his back or something until he goes to sleep? That's how we did it. Once I could settle him to sleep without nursing, we started telling him that Daddy would come in and help him go to sleep by rubbing his back if he woke in the night.

Yes, he cried for quite a while for the first couple of nights, but Daddy was there, comforting him and holding him. If it had been me, there is no way he would have settled without milk. But since it was Daddy, he had no choice, and he was already adapted to having his back rubbed as a way to settle.