Co-sleeping to own room - the transition [Archive]

Sarah Vaughan

March 27th 05, 10:38 PM

This is me thinking way ahead, as usual - as several people have
probably noticed, I do like to think out strategies for potential
issues/problems of parenthood well in advance rather than having to wing
it when a situation comes up. This has its pros and cons, but it's the
way I do things.

Issue I'm currently considering how to handle: transitioning to own
room. DS is currently a little over 4 months, and the current situation
is that when I go up to bed I change and feed him and put him to bed in
the travel cot (I think this is what Americans call a pack-and-play)
next to our bed. When he wakes for his first night feed, around 2 a.m.,
I take him and lie down on a mattress on the floor with him, and we
co-sleep for the rest of the night. This way, I can handle the night
feedings and still get some sleep, and DS gets a bit of experience
sleeping in a separate cot, which I'm hoping will make the eventual
transition easier. This situation is currently suiting me, DS, and DH,
and will not be changed until DS is at least 6 months old.

In the longer term, DH and I are not too happy with the idea of extended
co-sleeping. We both feel we'd like to have DS sleeping in a separate
room by the time he's somewhere round about 15 months. (I know this
decision will not meet with universal approval, but, too bad, it's what
we're comfortable with.) So I need to think about how I'm going to get
from Point A to Point B, as well as what exactly I want Point B to be
(for example, are we shooting for having him in his own room throughout
the night - which may not be realistic - or whether I'd be better off
planning to start him in his own room and then bring him through to ours
if he gets upset, or go through and sleep in his room if he gets upset,
or try to keep him in his own room for a certain amount of the night and
then bring him through to ours if he starts crying after 5 a.m., or
whatever).

What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you transitioned
a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room to
own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months, I
would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether
you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a bad
idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the
baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?
(And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF, formula,
mainly on solids?)

I figure that if I have a general idea of the kinds of problems and
issues I might face, I can discuss with DH in advance how we will handle
it if such and such happens, which I figure is hopefully going to be
better than transitioning him to his own room without prior thought and
then getting in a big fight about how we handle 2 a.m. wake-up calls.
TIA to anyone happy to share their experiences.

All the best,

Sarah
--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley

Mary W.

March 28th 05, 12:11 AM

Anne Rogers

March 28th 05, 12:41 AM

So you want experiences, here goes!

We seem to have been doing the opposite of you at this stage, DS was mostly
sleeping in a moses basket starting the night in our room then after the
feed in the middle of the night, I would take the moses basket to his room,
it seemed to get about an hour extra sleep out of him. DS sleeping in his
own room and sleeping through the night for the first time accidently
coincided, I was in hospital and DH put DS in his room and the next he knew
it was 7am, I presume DH had given him a bottle of ebm before putting him
down. He was about 4.5 months and exclusively breastfed at this stage. The
mistake I feel I made at this point was to feed him in the middle of the
night if he woke up, which from then on was once or twice a week. I think I
should have tried to get him back down in other ways, because I don't think
he was waking for food. Gradually the number of nights per week he woke up
crept up and suddenly without really noticing I was up 3 times a night every
night, co sleeping some of the time and taking him to his cot others.
Personally I think we handled sleep badly between 6 months and a year, had
we done things differently we may have avoided feeling the need to do
something radical and a year old. At a year old we did controlled crying and
it was a life saver, took us 3 nights to get him to sleeping through in his
cot, by 15 months he was sleeping through in his own bed (he suddenly
rejected the cot at 14ish months). So we achieved your objective, but it
didn't last, at 16 months it all went pear shaped, resulting in now at 22
months we are mostly cosleeping, the most common arrangement is for DH and
DS to share a bed and for me to have one to myself, to be honest we are
happy with the situation, but as things will be changing at some point in
the next 2-3 months it is something we need to think about, so I guess I'll
be posting my own questions soon!

Anne

Ericka Kammerer

March 28th 05, 12:53 AM

Melania

March 28th 05, 01:12 AM

> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room
to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months,
I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether

> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a
bad
> idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
> interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the

> baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?

> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF,
formula,
> mainly on solids?)

Hi Sarah,
Here's what we did:
Until ds was about 13 months old, he and I coslept and dh slept in a
different bed, sometimes in a different room. When we were somewhere
with a king-sized bed, we all slept together (we move around a lot, so
the experiences I describe are based on being in 1-bdrm, 2-bdrm, double
bed, king bed, all kinds of settings).

When ds was 13 mo, we moved him onto a mattress on the floor in a
separate room, with a baby gate on the door. I would nurse him to sleep
and then go to bed in the other room. For the first week, dh slept with
ds so that he would have warm, reassuring body there, and to get him a
bit more used to not having a breast available on demand. This cut me
back to one night nurse. As a side note, ovulation returned for me
about a week after this transition, and then I got my period back 2
weeks after that.

We followed this pattern till ds was about 17 mo, and then we decided
to cut out the remaining night nurse. At this point, he was sleeping on
a mattress on the floor in our room (now in a 1-bdrm). I still nursed
him to sleep, but would just go and lie with him and reassure him if he
woke in the night. He started sleeping through about 1/2 the time - and
I often woke up in his bed in the mornings. This was also the time I
started only offering to nurse for naptime and bedtime.

>From 20-22 months I resumed cosleeping with him, because we were
travelling so much that we felt he needed the extra comfort and
consistency - but I still did not nurse at night. At 22 months we moved
him into his own bed and weaned. He now sleeps through the night about
1/2 the time, and the rest of the time turns up in our bedroom at about
3 am, snuggles in, and sleeps the rest of the night there. Dh or I
often move to his bed at this time, which is fine b/c he's in a twin,
not a toddler bed.

He is now, at 26 mo, being left in his bed awake with the assurance
that we are "right outside the door if you need us," and this too has
been an easy transition in spite of him having gone to sleep with one
of us there for the first 2+ years of his life.

We've never used CIO, and we've certainly chosen to introduce new
things (night weaning, moving into his own bed, weaning, etc, etc)
because WE were ready for it, not necessarily because HE was (although
he was, actually!).

So, FWIW, that's our experience!!

Melania
Mom to Joffre (Jan 11, 2003)
and #2 (edd May 21, 2005)

Bruce Bridgman and Jeanne Yang

March 28th 05, 01:53 AM

We didn't really co-sleep in the formal sense - the kids always had their
own space but they were kept close to us the first six months.

In DD's case, she was in a bassinette the first 12 weeks. Then we moved her
to a crib with the side removed and pushed up against our bed. Around 6
months, we decided to transition her to her own room. We put the side up
and moved the crib a bit away from our bed. Then moved the crib across the
room from our bed. Around 8 months, we put her in her own room. It was a
pretty painless if somewhat gradual process. But when she was 10 months, we
moved so we essentially started all over again. She was back in our bedroom
in the crib and over the next two months, we moved her further away from our
bed and then into her own room. She always wanted us with her while she was
falling asleep and several nights I ended up asleep on her bedroom floor.
Luckily she had very plush carpeting in her bedroom.

In DS's case, he was in our bed for the first 8 weeks. Then we moved him to
his own crib and put it next to our bed (but I don't think we removed the
side). Around 3 months, we moved DS into DD's room - she wanted him in her
room and since she slept through his crying and night waking better than we
did, that's what we did. Around 6 months (but it could have been 10
months) DD got new bedroom furniture so DS moved to his own room. We have a
double futon in DS' room so if need be, we can sleep with him in his own
room.

Both kids were still nursing and still had night wakings (DS more than DD -
hence the double futon). Both children tend to be okay if we hold their
hands while they are falling asleep.

Jeanne

Rosalie B.

March 28th 05, 01:54 AM

Sarah Vaughan > wrote:
<snip>
>you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a bad
>idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
>interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the
>baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?
>(And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF, formula,
>mainly on solids?)
>
I'll give you another datapoint although I did not usually co-sleep.
My kids usually started out in a small crib or cradle somewhere near
to where I slept, but not in the same room, as my mom felt that if I
was in the same room with a child I wouldn't get enough sleep. They
were almost always in their own bed and in their own room from the
beginning. This meant that if they half waked, and if I waited a
little bit to go to them, they'd often go back to sleep on their own.

They were breastfed until they self -weaned which ranged (4 of them)
between 1 year and 3.5 years. They never got a bottle of any kind,
formula or EBF. I started solids way earlier than is done now, but it
is too late to change that. I started them on milk or fluids from a
cup pretty early too - it was some time before they got any
significant nutrition that way. We didn't have sippy cups then.

The one time I did co-sleep and it was kind of by accident, was when
we were living in a row house in Philadelphia next to a guy who worked
2nd shift. When he came home, he'd slam his garage door down and wake
up my baby (dd#3). At that point I'd take her back to bed with me to
nurse and we would finish the night together. She was about 6 months
when we moved there, and about 14 months when we moved away.

My children were all of substantial size when born (the smallest was 8
lb 4 oz) and they were also sleeping through the night early. I don't
remember exactly when, but certainly by 3 months. DD#3 was usual in
the respect of waking up, and ordinarily I would have just patted her
on the back until she went back to sleep or something rather than
taking her back to bed with me, but I could hear our neighbors and I
figured if I could hear them, they could hear us.

I feel that the night feeds were given up early because a) the babies
were fairly big b) they were pretty active during the day and could
sleep through c) they weren't right with me and couldn't smell the
milk d) they were used to sleeping by themselves. Another factor was
that they all ate really fast - 5 or 10 minutes and we'd be done. I
pretty much let them set their own schedule as I was a SAHM.

grandma Rosalie

[email protected]

March 28th 05, 09:48 AM

I always coslept with my dd, and my dh would sleep in a different room.
Actually I never sleep with my dh as I am a poor sleeper and he is a
snorer. At around 14 months old I transitioned her into her own bed,
but in my room still. My older dd also sleeps in that room with us.
Now, at 22 months I could easily move out of the girl's room and leave
them there without me as it is rare for my toddler to wake at night
anymore, but we don't have another room for me to move into right now
(we're going to add on another room), so I still sleep in the same room
with my dds.

KC

Irene

March 28th 05, 05:04 PM

Well, with ds we didn't really co-sleep consistently, so I'll skip that
story. But what we did with dd is actually kind of similar to what you
are doing.

We started with the pack-n-play in our room, but she spent most of the
night in our bed, since she's a little snugglebug. ;-) I forget how
old she was when we got rid of the pnp, but then we just started
putting her to bed in the crib in her room. When she wakes in the
night, I'll either take her straight to my bed or nurse her back to
sleep in the glider (in her room) and then put her back in the crib,
depending on how tired I am, how much I want my own space in the bed,
if I want to snuggle with my snugglebug, if she settles down easily or
not so easily, or if I really want to read the book next to the glider!
;-) So, at almost one year (!) she's in the crib about 80% of the
time, but she is in bed with me most mornings at least a couple of
hours.

Irene

[email protected]

March 28th 05, 05:56 PM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

>
> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room
to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months,
I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether

> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a
bad
> idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
> interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the

> baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?

> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF,
formula,
> mainly on solids?)

We transition my younger daughter around 15 months. Before that she was
sleeping in our bed. The main reason for the delay was that we didn't
want her to wake up her sister, with whom she shares a room.

One thing that aided the transition was music. I picked a soothing CD
that I could listen to every night for an extended period of time. I
nursed her to sleep on our bed each night. When we transitioned, I
played the CD in her room while nursing her in a rocking chair. After
she was pretty groggy, I put her in her crib. I would then rub her head
for a few minutes and then leave.

That's about it. She would sleep in the crib until about 1 am, and then
wake up. I would then go get her and let her nurse and sleep with us
the rest of the night.

We stopped the night feedings at around 20 months. We did that through
cry-it-out, which I think is acceptable once the baby is over 18 months
or so, but others may disagree. This only took one night (same for my
older daughter). Since 20 months, she has slept in her crib until
between 5 and 6 am, at which point she wakes up to nurse. I do this in
my bed if it is closer to 5 am, or getup and do it on the couch if
closer to 6 am.

Jan

Leslie

March 28th 05, 05:58 PM

When William turned a year old, we moved him to a mattress on the floor
of his own room. He would start the night there, then I would bring
him in our bed when he cried.

When I decided the time had come to have him in his own room all night,
I started going in his room to nurse him at night. Eventually this
started taking a few minutes only, then I would tell him I had to go to
the bathroom before nursing him and by the time I returned he'd be
asleep.

Sometime around 3.5 he started sleeping through.

I would skip the crib part altogether--that makes it very simple.

Leslie

Lora R

March 28th 05, 09:09 PM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months, I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether
> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a bad
> idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
> interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the
> baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?
> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF, formula,
> mainly on solids?)
>
<snip>
>
> All the best,
>
> Sarah

Hi Sarah,

Here is my experience:

From birth to 3 months, my son slept between my husband and I in a
snuggle nest. By morning he was usually right next to me though. At
3 months, we moved his crib into our room, took one side off, put it
right next to our bed as a sidecar. That worked really well, as it
gave us some space and he was sleeping near me but not right up
against me. That continued until 11 months, when he was waking up an
average of 6 times a night and I was going nuts(can't sleep through
nursing, even though lying down during it helped). I thought that if
we moved him farther away he might nurse less. So we didn't do this
in an effort to stop cosleeping, but in an effort to stop the frequent
night nursing.

So at 11 months, we put the side on his crib and moved it a foot away
from our bed. I started sitting up to nurse and putting him down in
his crib after, instead of letting him fall asleep right beside me. 2
weeks later we moved the crib another few feet from the bed. 2 weeks
later we moved it to his room across the hall. He was still waking up
just as much as before. He didn't seem to mind sleeping in another
room. I got to him as soon as he peeped in the night. He still
sleeps in his crib in his room, and he's nearly 18 months.

He is finally sleeping better though. Around a month ago, he just
started sleeping from 8:30 pm until 5:30 am. Then nurses, and goes
back to sleep until 7:30. He also naps better now. I think why that
happened was a combination of things:

-I halfway night weaned him starting at 12 months. I wouldn't nurse
between the hours of 10pm and 5am. If he woke up I would rock him
instead. He did protest that a bit at first, but not for long.

-He gave up his pacifier on his own at 15 months and would go to sleep
with only rocking instead of nursing or sucking on the paci.

-At 16 months we started putting him down awake after a nice long
nurse. Every time he'd make a sad or angry noise, I was right in
there and patted his back and told him gently to go to sleep. The
first couple of weeks this could take up to 2 hours and 25 trips into
his room, but I never let him cry-it-out at all. I couldn't have done
that. It worked really well too. After just a few weeks he was
falling asleep on his own with no upset after just 10 minutes or so.
(After the long nursing.) I think that really helped him so that when
he wakes up in the night he can just go right back to sleep without
needing to nurse or be rocked.

Hope this helps,
Lora

Cathy Weeks

March 28th 05, 10:08 PM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

> In the longer term, DH and I are not too happy with the idea of
extended
> co-sleeping. We both feel we'd like to have DS sleeping in a
separate
> room by the time he's somewhere round about 15 months. (I know this
> decision will not meet with universal approval, but, too bad, it's
what
> we're comfortable with.)

I guess the only question I've got is: Why 15 months? Why not before
then if it seems right, or after that, if that seems right? I worry
that drawing a line in the sand will only set you up for grief.

> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room
to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months,
I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether

Well, My daughter co-slept in our bed in a snuggle nest until she was 7
months. Then we moved her to a sidecar that we built ourselves,
because she was turning sideways and kicking me and keeping me awake.
She slept in the side car until she was 2 3/4 years old, and we moved
from New Jersey to Minnesota. I was tired of it anyway - she was
rolling into me all the time. (I'm a weenie about having anyone
touching me when I sleep).

When our stuff was delivered, instead of putting her back in the
sidecar, we set up a toddler bed, also next to our bed. It used the
same mattress, but was several inches lower than the surface of our
bed, which meant she couldn't roll into me anymore. We also set up a
twin bed in her room, and 5 months after we moved, at age 3 years 3
months, she *asked* to sleep in her own room and own bed. I set up the
baby monitor so that the transmitter was on her bedside table, and the
receiver by my bed, and on the occasional night she needs attention, I
can hear her, though we've coached her to just come and get us.

My big thing was that I didn't want to transition her to her own room
until she was sleeping through the night regularly. She started doing
it occasionally, but not regularly at age 2. Since I have sleep
troubles, I wanted nighttime parenting to be as easy as possible to
increase my chances of going back to sleep. By age 3 she was sleeping
all night more often than not, and we had been thinking about
transitioning her anyway, but wanted to wait until we'd been in this
house for awhile - one big life change at a time was plenty.

Since this is pretty much NOT what you are looking for, I can relate
the experiences of a close friend. Their daughter coslept as a newborn,
and around 3 months of age, they transitioned her to a crib/cot in her
own room across the hall. She napped there, too. However, in the
night, they often just brought her to bed with them to sleep out the
rest of the night. She's now 21 months of age, and sleeping in a twin
bed in her own room, and when she wakes in the night, she just slides
off the bed, and heads to her parents room, and sleeps the rest of the
night there. I figure she'll keep doing that until she sleeps through
the night regularly, so there's no transitioning to be done. Her mom
told me that when she's caught up sleep-wise, she takes her back to her
own bed and settles her there, but most of the time, she's so tired,
they all just go back to sleep in their bed.

Hope this helps.

Cathy Weeks
Mommy to Kivi Alexis 12/01

Sidheag McCormack

March 28th 05, 10:13 PM

Sarah Vaughan writes:

> This is me thinking way ahead, as usual - as several people have
> probably noticed, I do like to think out strategies for potential
> issues/problems of parenthood well in advance rather than having to wing
> it when a situation comes up. This has its pros and cons, but it's the
> way I do things.

Me too :-)

First a remark: when our DS was around your DS's age he was sleeping pretty
well, maybe waking twice per night. This fell apart when he was about 6/7
months, and we had a long, long stretch of him waking every hour or so (a
night with two two hour stretches was a very good one for a long time).
Turns out that this is a really common pattern, whatever strategies people
are using. So don't be too surprised if it turns out that there's a
mountain between Point A and Point B, though I hope there won't be.

> how you did it, how it went,

We had DS in a cosleeper/bedside cot (3 sided) until we moved him into his
own room when he was around 14 months. We hadn't planned to move him - the
original plan was to have him in the cosleeper until he asked for his own
bed - but I had begun to suspect that some of his night wakings might be
caused by us disturbing him. With hindsight, I think probably they weren't.

We had a double futon mattress on the floor in his room; he was already
used to napping on it. We went away for Christmas and took the opportunity
of the break in routine to make the switch, i.e. before we went away he was
in our room and when we got back he was in his own.

For the first two weeks after the switch we didn't bring him into our room
at all in the night, because we thought that would be confusing. I went to
him when he woke, and if I was too tired to want to go back to my bed I
stayed there after resettling him. He continued to wake on the same pattern
as he'd had before the switch, to our disappointment, except that the first
waking moved back a bit - he had been waking about our bedtime most nights,
and that may well have been caused by the disturbance of us going to bed.
After the first two weeks, our next attempt at a plan was that we'd bring
him into our room on his first waking. However, that didn't work.
Transferring him from his room to ours seemed to wake him up thoroughly and
disconcert him for the rest of the night. So we were then stuck with me
doing quite a lot of cosleeping in his room, like it or not, because I
couldn't cope with lots of treks back and forth. The one thing we'd gained
so far was that we could go to bed with the light on, which I found a big
plus - I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed reading in bed!

About two months after we made the switch, his sleep fairly suddenly
improved. Possibly this was a delayed reaction to the switch of rooms, but
I think it's probably independent of it, TBH. Nothing else seems to have
changed; I think it's just a maturity thing. With hindsight, it might have
worked better to make the switch at 16 rather than 14 months. He quite
suddenly began to be much better at resettling himself, and he began to go
to sleep from fully awake without a breast in his mouth (he'd always come
off before he was completely asleep, but now he'll come off, look around,
smile at me and then go to sleep). He's had a terrible time with colds and
molars lately, but I think once that's all over he'll probably sleep
through regularly. Anyway: current state is that on a good night (e.g. last
night) he'll sleep through from his bedtime until between 4.30 and 5.30,
then I go in and he'll have a long feed, then we both go back to sleep for
another couple of hours. On a bad night, he'll wake at midnight, I'll go
and feed and resettle him and go back to my room, he'll wake again around
2, I'll go to him and spend the rest of the night there. Basically I stay
in his room rather than going back to my own if it's the second or later
waking of the night or if it's after about 3.30; that seems to work best to
get me enough sleep. (My bed is more comfortable but the trip is killing,
so it's a trade-off.)

> whether you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect
> was a bad idea or should have been done differently.

Overall I think it might have worked better if I'd had a little more
patience and left it another couple of months, but I don't think I could
have known that and I'm certainly not claiming there's a magic age for all
babies. I definitely like the fact that he's on a futon mattress not in a
cot. With hindsight it would have been worthwhile to get a good double
mattress to put on the floor instead of the futon though - the futon is not
ideal for my back though DS seems to sleep as well there as anywhere.

> I'd also be really interested to hear what happened about night feeds -
> how long did the baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did
> you handle this?

Covered above I think. FWIW, though, I don't believe babies wake up "for"
night feeds. Don't know about you, but when I wake up at night, I'm not
aware that I'm waking for anything. I've never understood why babies are
supposed to be different.

> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF, formula,
> mainly on solids?)

Eating lots of solids, in nursery 9am to 4.30pm ish, also still
breastfeeding a lot when not at nursery.

HTH,

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Sidheag McCormack

March 28th 05, 10:24 PM

FUMOP:

It may be worth saying that many things stayed the same between DS sleeping
in our room and in his: he was in the same sleeping bag, same animals and
blanket around, same bedtime routine, etc. That may have been important: if
transferring from cosleeping with adult sheet and blanket to cot with cot
bedding, it might perhaps be harder.

Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that babies
"wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on, either - I may
have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that wasn't there. Sorry
if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many people seem to think that
DS would sleep through the night if only I'd night wean him. I really
don't want to, partly because I've read one too many stories about babies
weaning completely after the mother forces night weaning. (And I've also
read plenty of stories of babies who still wake after night weaning, and of
it then being much harder to get them back to sleep, and my instinct is
that that's what DS would do.)

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Rosalie B.

March 28th 05, 11:57 PM

Sidheag McCormack > wrote:

>Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that babies
>"wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on, either - I may
>have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that wasn't there. Sorry
>if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many people seem to think that
>DS would sleep through the night if only I'd night wean him. I really
>don't want to, partly because I've read one too many stories about babies
>weaning completely after the mother forces night weaning. (And I've also
>read plenty of stories of babies who still wake after night weaning, and of
>it then being much harder to get them back to sleep, and my instinct is
>that that's what DS would do.)

I have never heard of that at all. Not that it couldn't be the case,
but I just never heard of it possibly because I did not have a lot of
conversation about bf with anyone except possibly my mom. Most people
back then bottle fed.

Mine nursed at night longer than anytime - the last thing at night and
the first thing in the morning was the last to go. If my baby (or
year old) didn't want to nurse first thing in the morning, I knew she
was weaned. (Is that what you meant?)

Also my kids had such a strong sucking need that most of them (3 out
of 4) had a pacifier or sucked their thumbs. This worked at night in
place of pacifying on me. The one that did not do that was the one
that wasn't weaned until 3.5.

grandma Rosalie

shinypenny

March 29th 05, 12:12 AM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room
to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months,
I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether

> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a
bad
> idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
> interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the

> baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?

> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF,
formula,
> mainly on solids?)

My girls are now 10 and 12, so it is a bit hard for me to think back to
that time and remember all the details, so this is all in retrospect
and with foggy memory.

Basically, DD#1, who was colicky and would bf every 2 hours round the
clock, co-slept with us not necessarily out of choice but rather as a
"survival" tactic, until she was 9 months old (at which time, in utter
desparation, I did the cruel mommy thing and ferberized her).

With DD#2, things went much differently. First of all, she was a much
more peaceful kid from the get-go, coming into the world much more
peacefully, two weeks late and a whopping 2 lbs heavier than her
sister. She was able to go much longer between feedings, and much less
fussy in general (sometimes I think DD#1's nervous system just wasn't
quite fully baked, and that's why she was so colicky).

I did co-sleep with DD#2 for the first month as a matter of principle,
after reading the book "Self-Calmed Baby" while pregnant with her, and
determining I would do whatever I could from day one to prevent having
to later Ferberize her. So she and I holed up in the guest bedroom,
which we kept quiet and dark, and spent the time getting to know each
other and I started the beginnings of teaching her to self-comfort.

After that first month, she went straight to a crib in her own bedroom.
I'd put her down sleepy but still awake, and to this day, it takes her
less than 10 minutes to conk out. She's always been a champion sleeper.
By the age of one month, she was able to get her fingers to her mouth
and suck on them (she gave up fingersucking around age 3 or so).

I didn't even bother with a baby monitor because I'd learned through
experience that if the baby REALLY needed me, I'd know because she'd
make it loud and clear from down the hall. So I probably blissfully
slept through any half-wakenings. :-)

There were periods when she'd have a growth spurt or an illness when
she would wake up and make it loud and clear she needed me, but they
were few and far between. Sometimes I'd bring her into bed with us
(particularly if she was sick), but most of the time I'd lay on the
extra bed in her room and nurse her there, then lay her back down
sleepy but awake. Unlike her sister, she was never the type to nurse
for comfort -when she'd nurse, she'd nurse for food only.

Two entirely different kids, and two entirely different experiences. It
really depends on the child, I think. With DD#2, I don't think I'd have
done anything differently, and even if I had, I think she'd have been
hard to "screw up" - she was and still is a basically easy kid.

With DD#1, I do feel I was pretty inexperienced and inept, and maybe
could have avoided having to ferberize her, but then again, she was
quite a handful with much greater needs and issues than her younger
sister. I did the best I could, and I am much relieved that despite
mucking it all up those first 9 months, today she seems none the worse
for wear! Ever since ferberizing her, she has been a basically easy
kid, too.

jen

Sue

March 29th 05, 02:21 AM

"Sarah Vaughan" > wrote in message
> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months, I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether
> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a bad
> idea or should have been done differently.

DD1: Slept in a bassinet at the end of our bed until around 7 months. She
was then transferred into her crib in her own room. She would usually only
wake up once during the night to be fed.

DD2: Same thing, bassinet at the end of our bed until around 6-7 months old.
Transitioned her into DD1's bedroom in her own crib. Had a night time
routine of a feed, read a book, rock and then put to bed. Both were awake
when put to bed and they fell asleep on their own.

DD3: Co-slept out of necessity for the first month of life, transitioned to
bassinet in our room and then transitioned into crib in her sisters' room at
6-7 months old. They all slept in the same room for quite a while until we
moved and then the younger two girls slept together and the oldest has had a
room to herself ever since. Kept the routine of rocking, singing a song,
read a book and on alternate nights they would have a bath.

All the girls were basically sleeping through the night at around 8-9
months. Due to weight gaining problems, DD1 was taking a supplemental bottle
to bed with her and we transitioned her away from that bottle at around 15
months old. I feel my approach worked well for us. I didn't want to
co-sleep, but clearly DD3 needed it, as she would not sleep for that first
month. I don't think I would have done anything different. I did have pretty
decent sleepers and I consider myself extremely lucky.
--
Sue (mom to three girls)

PCBH

March 29th 05, 04:38 AM

Sidheag McCormack wrote:
> Sarah Vaughan writes:
>
> > This is me thinking way ahead, as usual - as several people have
> > probably noticed, I do like to think out strategies for potential
> > issues/problems of parenthood well in advance rather than having
to wing
> > it when a situation comes up. This has its pros and cons, but it's
the
> > way I do things.
>
> Me too :-)
>
> First a remark: when our DS was around your DS's age he was sleeping
pretty
> well, maybe waking twice per night. This fell apart when he was about
6/7
> months, and we had a long, long stretch of him waking every hour or
so (a
> night with two two hour stretches was a very good one for a long
time).
> Turns out that this is a really common pattern, whatever strategies
people
> are using. So don't be too surprised if it turns out that there's a
> mountain between Point A and Point B, though I hope there won't be.

I had the same with my DS. At the worst point, he was waking about
every 45 minutes to an hour. I did the "night waking logs" mentioned
in the No Cry Sleep Solution, and he was up 8 or 9 times some nights.
That was brutal. he wouldn't nap either, so I'd put him in the car and
drive around. I played a lullaby CD as I drove. Now I can't bear to
hear that CD---too many bad memories of a very difficult time. I don't
know how many times I just cried from the sheer exhaustion. I'm sorry
you went thru this too. It was just horrible.

PC

mom to DS 10/2003

Akuvikate

March 29th 05, 06:42 AM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:
>
> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
transitioned
> a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room
to
> own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months,
I
> would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether

> you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a
bad
> idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
> interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the

> baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?

> (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF,
formula,
> mainly on solids?)

At around 6 months the Bug would only sleep with or on me period --
naps were in my lap, and we had the same bedtime out of necessity. If
I tried to put her down and sneak off it didn't work. Over the next 6
months she started napping on her own (usually nursed to sleep) and
sleeping the first strech of the night in her pack and play and then
crib when we got one. When she first woke to feed a few hours later
she'd come into bed with us. At 13 months I started my medical
residency and desperately needed good sleep at home, since I don't get
it when on call. About 13.5 months we moved the crib into her room and
basically kept the same pattern (start crib, come to bed) for a week or
two. At 14 months we did cry-it-out. Almost more of a problem than
the night waking at that point was that it took forever to get her to
fall asleep, and cry-it-out took care of that. She cried 45 minutes
the first night, about 10 minutes the second night, and then hardly at
all after that. For the first week or so we'd still go in and get her
when she woke at night. We then did "cry-it-out" for the night
wakings, though it was really more like "briefly fuss and grumble it
out". She quickly became a pretty good sleeper. Now she sometimes
protests when initially put down for bed, but for the most part if she
cries it's because something's really wrong. It's become a tremendous
treat to sleep with her in the bed, though we all get wretched sleep
when we do. We sometimes indulge in it anyway when it feels like I've
been away at work too much and we both need the snuggle time more than
the sleep.

I don't really have major regrets. I probably would have done cry it
out a little sooner (10-12 months?) had I known it would be so easy.
Again, it wasn't so much about the night waking but getting her down to
sleep was a brutal struggle for a few months once she stopped falling
asleep nursing.

Kate, ignorant foot soldier of the medical cartel
and the Bug, 21 months

Mary Ann Tuli

March 29th 05, 09:30 AM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:
> This is me thinking way ahead, as usual - as several people have
> probably noticed, I do like to think out strategies for potential
> issues/problems of parenthood well in advance rather than having to wing
> it when a situation comes up. This has its pros and cons, but it's the
> way I do things.
>

This is what we did:

- DS started off in his own cot in his own room and would join us in bed
on his first waking.
- the first waking got later and later until DS didn't join us until the
morning. This was at just turned 2.

Mary Ann

Linz

March 29th 05, 01:14 PM

"Sarah Vaughan" > wrote in message
...

> What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you
> transitioned a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or
> from your room to own room some time between the ages of 6 months
> and 15 or so months, I would love to hear your story of how you did
> it, how it went, whether you feel your approach worked, and what
> you feel in retrospect was a bad idea or should have been done
> differently. I'd also be really interested to hear what happened
> about night feeds - how long did the baby keep waking up for them,
> how often, and how did you handle this? (And what was baby eating
> during the day at this point - EBF, formula, mainly on solids?)

We had YoungBloke in a carrycot by the bed from birth, and once I felt
comfortable sleeping with him in the bed with us then when he woke for
a feed I tended to bring him into bed and co-sleep. Once he was too
big for the carrycot (around 4 months, I think) we put the proper cot
at the end of our bed and continued as before, but sometimes I'd stay
awake long enough to put him back in the cot when the feed was over.

When he was 6 months we moved the cot into the nursery in the hopes
that he would stop waking up when we came to bed, since we thought we
were waking him up. It didn't make any difference, but the transition
was made. It was around that time that I stopped dealing with /every/
waking since YB probably didn't need a BF an hour after the previous
one. And OldBloke and I discovered independently that trying to put YB
back in the cot once he was asleep woke him up and he'd get quite
hysterical even though he'd been able to settle himself in our room.
So we took to lying him on the double futon mattress that was on the
nursery floor, and he'd go to sleep. At which point we gave up with
the cot entirely and he's slept on the mattress since he was about 9
months, I guess. It means that nightfeeds are really easy - I go and
lie down with him and he feeds. When he's done either he's asleep or I
stroke him till he goes to sleep, or I'm asleep anyway and he gives
up.

YB is 17 months. He still has at least one feed between 10pm and 6am,
sometimes more. Last night he fed at 10, 2 and 5.30, which remains the
worst feed since we get up at 6.

At some point we're probably going to start alternating who goes to
him when he wakes up - he doesn't need 3hourly feeding during the day
so he shouldn't at night - but we've not got that desperate yet...

Sidheag McCormack

March 29th 05, 08:36 PM

Rosalie B writes:

> Sidheag McCormack > wrote:
>> Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that
>> babies "wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on, either
>> - I may have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that wasn't
>> there. Sorry if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many people seem
>> to think that DS would sleep through the night if only I'd night wean
>> him. I really don't want to, partly because I've read one too many
>> stories about babies weaning completely after the mother forces night
>> weaning. (And I've also read plenty of stories of babies who still wake
>> after night weaning, and of it then being much harder to get them back
>> to sleep, and my instinct is that that's what DS would do.)

> I have never heard of that at all. Not that it couldn't be the case, but
> I just never heard of it possibly because I did not have a lot of
> conversation about bf with anyone except possibly my mom. Most people
> back then bottle fed.

Which, night weaning leading to weaning, or night weaning not leading to
better sleeping? I have the impression that the latter is really common;
the former not so common, but that's the one I really wouldn't want to
risk, since I'm not at all ready for DS to wean. A lot of my vicarious
experience is coming from sleep lists.

> Mine nursed at night longer than anytime - the last thing at night and
> the first thing in the morning was the last to go. If my baby (or year
> old) didn't want to nurse first thing in the morning, I knew she was
> weaned. (Is that what you meant?)

I'm a bit confused - if yours nursed at night longer than anytime, why were
they weaned when they didn't want first thing in the morning? Or do you
mean "longer" as in "for more minutes" not "longer" as in "to an older
age"? What I meant was that I've heard (quite a few times) of babies
refusing to nurse at all after their mothers stop letting them nurse in the
night. I suppose the optimistic interpretation of this is that the baby was
just about ready to wean anyway, and that it was the mother picking up
those signals that caused her to initiate night weaning just then. The
pessimistic interpretation is that the night weaning meant that the baby
could no longer rely on nursing as the symbol of mother-love, and so
stopped finding it a comfort at all.

> Also my kids had such a strong sucking need that most of them (3 out of
> 4) had a pacifier or sucked their thumbs. This worked at night in place
> of pacifying on me. The one that did not do that was the one that wasn't
> weaned until 3.5.

That's interesting. FWIW Colin has never been at all interested in sucking
on anything except me, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he were still
nursing at 3.5, but we'll see!

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Phoebe & Allyson

March 29th 05, 08:54 PM

Sidheag McCormack wrote:

> I'm a bit confused - if yours nursed at night longer than anytime, why were
> they weaned when they didn't want first thing in the morning?

Not the OP, but IME, the first nursing in the morning is still a
night-nursing in my eyes. At our house, it starts around 7:30am and
continues mostly without interruption until 9:30, when I get up. (If
there's a significant interruption, I get up earlier, and there's no
more milk until I get home at night, which makes it less likely she'll
let go for any reason in the morning.)

If Caterpillar didn't want first thing in the morning, I'd also conclude
she was weaned. And since she doesn't mind going from waking to bedtime
with no milk if I'm not around, she fits in the "has more extended
night-nursing than day-nursing" definition of nursing longer at night
than anytime.

Phoebe :)

Rosalie B.

March 29th 05, 09:04 PM

Sidheag McCormack > wrote:

>Rosalie B writes:
>
> > Sidheag McCormack > wrote:
>>> Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that
>>> babies "wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on, either
>>> - I may have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that wasn't
>>> there. Sorry if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many people seem
>>> to think that DS would sleep through the night if only I'd night wean
>>> him. I really don't want to, partly because I've read one too many
>>> stories about babies weaning completely after the mother forces night
>>> weaning. (And I've also read plenty of stories of babies who still wake
>>> after night weaning, and of it then being much harder to get them back
>>> to sleep, and my instinct is that that's what DS would do.)
>
> > I have never heard of that at all. Not that it couldn't be the case, but
> > I just never heard of it possibly because I did not have a lot of
> > conversation about bf with anyone except possibly my mom. Most people
> > back then bottle fed.
>
>Which, night weaning leading to weaning, or night weaning not leading to
>better sleeping? I have the impression that the latter is really common;

Night weaning leading to weaning. Or rather giving up the feedings in
the middle of the night AKA sleeping through leading to total
weaning.. All of mine slept through early (i.e. by about 3 months)
and none of them were weaned for some time after that.

Better sleeping for whom? The mom? I would completely agree that a
baby that doesn't wake up has a mom that sleeps better. It doesn't
mean that the child will be weaned.

>the former not so common, but that's the one I really wouldn't want to
>risk, since I'm not at all ready for DS to wean. A lot of my vicarious
>experience is coming from sleep lists.
>
> > Mine nursed at night longer than anytime - the last thing at night and
> > the first thing in the morning was the last to go. If my baby (or year
> > old) didn't want to nurse first thing in the morning, I knew she was
> > weaned. (Is that what you meant?)
>
>I'm a bit confused - if yours nursed at night longer than anytime, why were
>they weaned when they didn't want first thing in the morning? Or do you
>mean "longer" as in "for more minutes" not "longer" as in "to an older
>age"? What I meant was that I've heard (quite a few times) of babies
>refusing to nurse at all after their mothers stop letting them nurse in the
>night. I suppose the optimistic interpretation of this is that the baby was
>just about ready to wean anyway, and that it was the mother picking up
>those signals that caused her to initiate night weaning just then. The
>pessimistic interpretation is that the night weaning meant that the baby
>could no longer rely on nursing as the symbol of mother-love, and so
>stopped finding it a comfort at all.
>
My kids nursed during the day, and last thing before bed and first
thing in the morning (sometimes before I was ready to get up). They
didn't get up for a feeding in the middle of the night except for dd#3
who was waked by a neighbor.

I didn't stop 'letting' them nurse at night. They just slept through
the night and didn't wake or at least didn't wake all the way up
enough so that I had to go to them and feed them. That's one of the
advantages of them not sleeping in the same room as me. I didn't wake
up right away, and they went back to sleep.

I doubt very much that babies think of nursing as a symbol or of
anything except food. IMHO, saying that babies only nurse because
it is a symbol of love is way over analyzing the situation.

> > Also my kids had such a strong sucking need that most of them (3 out of
> > 4) had a pacifier or sucked their thumbs. This worked at night in place
> > of pacifying on me. The one that did not do that was the one that wasn't
> > weaned until 3.5.
>
>That's interesting. FWIW Colin has never been at all interested in sucking
>on anything except me, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he were still
>nursing at 3.5, but we'll see!

DS was big enough to undo my blouse. He remembers that. I had to
tell him that he couldn't do that in public.

I tried to give #1 a pacifier because I considered it would be better
than thumb sucking, but she rejected the pacifier (Just spat it out.)
and preferred her thumb.

#2 ate so fast (and my milk let down so fast that it almost choked her
sometimes) that she couldn't 'comfort nurse' because she was chock
full. So she sucked her hands and got blood blisters on them before
she was 3 weeks old. So I made her take a pacifier. (BTW she was the
one who would refuse to nurse on the left side - I guess because it
didn't let down as fast.) #3 also had a pacifier and also refused
most times to nurse on the left. I looked very lopsided.

I don't really remember what happened with ds (who was #4), except
that by then (when dd#1 was 10) I got kind of slapdash in my methods.
I couldn't find the kind of baby book that I had with the girls, so I
didn't get around to writing the stuff down that I did with them and
if I don't write it down, I don't remember it as well.

grandma Rosalie

Sidheag McCormack

March 30th 05, 09:45 AM

Rosalie B writes:

> Night weaning leading to weaning. Or rather giving up the feedings in
> the middle of the night AKA sleeping through leading to total weaning..
> All of mine slept through early (i.e. by about 3 months) and none of
> them were weaned for some time after that.

Oh, I didn't mean that not eating at night, per se, led to weaning - that's
not what I've seen at all. What I was talking about is situations where the
mother deliberately night weans the baby, i.e., refuses to feed at night
even though the baby wants to. That's what does, anecdotally, sometimes
seem to lead to complete weaning. And I stick by my suggestion that
breastfeeding is a symbol of love to babies, though it may be unprovable.
It's certainly not only about food, at least not for my baby.

Your kind of night weaning, where the baby doesn't eat at night because
s/he doesn't wake (enough) and need to, is what I'm aiming for - and we are
getting there, fingers crossed.

Sidheag
DS Colin Oct 27 2003

Larry McMahan

April 1st 05, 08:38 PM

In misc.kids.breastfeeding Sarah Vaughan > wrote:

: What I'm after here is not advice, but experiences. If you transitioned
: a baby from co-sleeping to sleeping in own cot and/or from your room to
: own room some time between the ages of 6 months and 15 or so months, I
: would love to hear your story of how you did it, how it went, whether
: you feel your approach worked, and what you feel in retrospect was a bad
: idea or should have been done differently. I'd also be really
: interested to hear what happened about night feeds - how long did the
: baby keep waking up for them, how often, and how did you handle this?
: (And what was baby eating during the day at this point - EBF, formula,
: mainly on solids?)

OK. Clara first. She slept in our queen sized bed with us until
between 7 and 8 months. At that time we set up a single (twin) bed
right next to our queen, and she slept there (and continued to nurse
3 to 5 times a night. When Monika got pregnant at 13 months, we
decided to more Clara to her own room. At 15 months we moved her
to a single bed in her own room. This was the hardest part. We were
also brushing her teeth at that time and had a rule of no nursing
after she brused her teeth until she woke up in the middle of the
night. I would rock her to sleep in her room. For the first three
or four days, she would cry to be nursed. After that, she was OK
with me rocking her to sleep. At that time, when she wanted to nurse
Monika would go nurse her in her room. (We moved her to a single bed
in her room). We would let her come to our room after it got light.

With Niel, we did the same thing about moving him onto a single bed
next to ours at 7 months, but we did not move him into his own room
until about 2 1/2 years. There was not crying in his case.

Hope this helps,
Larry

Sarah Vaughan

April 3rd 05, 07:14 PM

In message >, Sidheag McCormack
> writes
>Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that
>babies "wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on, either
>- I may have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that wasn't
>there. Sorry if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many people
>seem to think that DS would sleep through the night if only I'd night
>wean him. I really don't want to, partly because I've read one too many
>stories about babies weaning completely after the mother forces night
>weaning.

I'm actually not sure what it is you think I mean that you disagree
with, so sorry if I'm being dense on this one. Basically, what I'm
wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting nursing
in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can plan how
to deal with this. (The main issue is convincing DH that this will be a
problem and that I'm not just being neurotic.)

> (And I've also read plenty of stories of babies who still wake after
>night weaning, and of it then being much harder to get them back to
>sleep, and my instinct is that that's what DS would do.)

Ah, that's useful to know, thanks - I can tell DH that.

Thanks to everyone for your stories. To answer a couple of specific
points in posts that didn't download onto my computer but that I read on
Google:

Lara - Actually, that is indeed helpful to know, because we're moving
house when DS is 7 mts & I'd thought that would make things more
difficult. Good to know that this won't necessarily be the case.

Cathy - Oh, I didn't mean that we were planning to transition him
exactly at 15 months. That was why I said 'by the time he's somewhere
around 15 months....' - we're happy with the idea of it being either
earlier or at least a bit later. But we do both feel that by the time
he's getting into the toddler stage, we'd like him to be in his own room
for at least part of the night (I think DH is shooting for the whole
night, but I'm not sure about that).

All the best,

Sarah

--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley

Ericka Kammerer

April 3rd 05, 10:21 PM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

> Basically, what I'm
> wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting nursing
> in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can plan how
> to deal with this. (The main issue is convincing DH that this will be a
> problem and that I'm not just being neurotic.)

Well, all of mine were eating solids long before they gave
up night nursing (they stopped night nursing at 15, 15, and 19 months).
By the time they started solids, however, they were down to one (or
two, at most) night feedings.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Clisby

April 3rd 05, 11:42 PM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

> In message >, Sidheag McCormack
> > writes
>
>> Also rereading what you wrote I realise that you may not think that
>> babies "wake up for" night feeds in the way I was commenting on,
>> either - I may have been reading a suggestion into what you wrote that
>> wasn't there. Sorry if so, I'm a bit touchy about it, since so many
>> people seem to think that DS would sleep through the night if only I'd
>> night wean him. I really don't want to, partly because I've read one
>> too many stories about babies weaning completely after the mother
>> forces night weaning.
>
>
> I'm actually not sure what it is you think I mean that you disagree
> with, so sorry if I'm being dense on this one. Basically, what I'm
> wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting nursing
> in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can plan how
> to deal with this. (The main issue is convincing DH that this will be a
> problem and that I'm not just being neurotic.)
>

I don't know about its being a problem - but my son usually nursed at
least once in the night until he was about 18 months old. He'd been
enthusiastically eating solids since a little past 5 months, so I
wouldn't automatically assume that eating plenty of solids = night weaning.

Clisby

hollyml

April 3rd 05, 11:45 PM

With my DS, I typically put him down at bedtime, after nursing him to
sleep, and then brought him into my bed when he woke (because I'm way
too lazy to try to get a baby back to sleep any other way than nursing
lying down!). For the first 7 months or so he started the night in a
bassinet next to my bed but then he outgrew it so we put him in the
crib in another room. On nights when I was really tired, we'd just
co-sleep from the start because he was a lot less likely to wake up
during the night that way! But even when he started in the crib, other
than a few bouts with teething he generally only woke once during the
night, so it wasn't too hard for me to just go get him and nurse him
back down.

So, anyway, the situation isn't exactly analagous to yours. But the
way we made the transition was simple -- we just moved him. He
continued to spend about half the night in our bed, most nights, until
he was 2 years old, at which point we got him a twin bed, and put away
the crib. Thereafter, when he woke at night, instead of waking fully,
realizing he was alone, and crying loudly until I came to get him, at
which point the only way to get him back to sleep was nursing -- he'd
half-wake, climb out of bed, toddle into our room, climb into bed next
to me and go back to sleep without waking me. I'd just find him there
in the morning. Heaven. :-) I wished we'd gone to a big boy bed much
earlier!

Without our really doing anything to encourage it, he gradually began
joining us later in the morning or sometimes not at all. When his
sister was born we taught him to climb into bed at our feet, because I
didn't want him to squish the baby and because there just wasn't room
for all 4 of us side by side -- but he was 3 yrs by that time and coped
with it pretty well. He's 4 now and typically only gets into bed with
us on weekends when we're still in bed later in the a.m.

With DD, we won't use a crib at all because we don't have space for
one. (Only two bedrooms, and insufficient space in the kids' room for
a twin bed AND a crib.) So DD just sleeps with us. (We do have a
bassinet but haven't used it a whole lot -- she has a much less regular
schedule and doesn't nurse to sleep as easily as DS did at that age.)
When she's old enough for the trundle bed under DS' bed, we'll try
putting her to bed there and see how it goes. :-)

Holly

Nikki

April 4th 05, 08:18 AM

Sarah Vaughan wrote:

>Basically, what I'm
> wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting
> nursing in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can
> plan how to deal with this. (

IME quantity of solids was not related to night nursing at all. I had one
that ate a below average amount of solids, and one that ate an above average
amount of solids. They both nursed like crazy all night long until I forced
the issue of night weaning at 18 months.

I haven't responded previously because it was very difficult for my kids to
move out of the family bed and we ended up doing it much later then the time
frame you gave because of it. It was wasn't so smooth so I didn't have any
advice ;-) Personally if you are really opposed to it being a long term
situation I'd start working on it now. Some kids *do* move out easily and
some don't. I don't think you really have any way of knowing which kind of
baby you've got at this point - unless maybe they are sleeping through
already.

Night weaning, while nice for me, didn't make it any easier for them to
sleep in their own bed.

--
Nikki

Larry McMahan

April 4th 05, 06:42 PM

Taking this commnet totally out of context, but hoping to
impart some useful information...

In misc.kids.breastfeeding Sarah Vaughan > wrote:

: Basically, what I'm
: wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting nursing
: in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can plan how
: to deal with this. (The main issue is convincing DH that this will be a
: problem and that I'm not just being neurotic.)

What will be a problem? I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Let
me start. Yes, your DS will likely want to night nurse even after he
has been on solids for some time. Is that a problem? I hope not.
I would expect another year to year and a half of night nursing after
starting solids, based on average nursing tendencies (some longer, some
shorter, we were well beyond double that).

I also agree with the poster who said that you will have night waking
even of you drop night nursing, and it that case, it could take
longer to get them back to sleep. I think it is more useful to plan
to continue to night nursing as long as necessary, rather than try
to find a plan to end it. :-)

Larry

[email protected]

April 4th 05, 07:52 PM

(Bah. I give up. I'm just going to reply through Google.)

Nikki wrote:
>
> I haven't responded previously because it was very difficult for my
kids to
> move out of the family bed and we ended up doing it much later then
the time
> frame you gave because of it. It was wasn't so smooth so I didn't
have any
> advice ;-)

Oh, but that's exactly the kind of story I want to hear! Well, maybe
not exactly 'want to', but you hopefully see what I mean. ;-) If
there are things you wish you'd done differently, then I can learn
something, and if it was just an unavoidably difficult situation then
at least I can prepare myself for the possibility of it going badly
when we try it.

All the best,

Sarah
(E-mail address is . The above address is
defunct.)

[email protected]

April 4th 05, 07:59 PM

Larry McMahan wrote:
> Taking this commnet totally out of context, but hoping to
> impart some useful information...
>
> In misc.kids.breastfeeding Sarah Vaughan
> wrote:
>
> : Basically, what I'm
> : wanting to know are the chances that Jamie will still be wanting
nursing
> : in the night even once he's taking more solids, so that I can plan
how
> : to deal with this. (The main issue is convincing DH that this will
be a
> : problem and that I'm not just being neurotic.)
>
> What will be a problem? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

OK, that it'll be something that'll happen. The problem is that I
think DH thinks that Jamie'll start sleeping through the night shortly
after starting to take solids. He wants to have him spending the night
in his own cot by the time he's around 8 months old, which is not
realistic for me if he's still nursing this often at night.

Let
> me start. Yes, your DS will likely want to night nurse even after he
> has been on solids for some time. Is that a problem? I hope not.

That in itself isn't. Figuring out a way to deal with it that both DH
and I are happy with might be, but that's our problem. What I'm trying
to get is information on what sort of thing we can expect at this
stage, so we can make some realistic plans as to how to deal with it.

> I would expect another year to year and a half of night nursing after
> starting solids, based on average nursing tendencies (some longer,
some
> shorter, we were well beyond double that).
>
> I also agree with the poster who said that you will have night waking
> even of you drop night nursing, and it that case, it could take
> longer to get them back to sleep. I think it is more useful to plan
> to continue to night nursing as long as necessary, rather than try
> to find a plan to end it. :-)

Thanks - this is pretty much what I was expecting from what I've read
elsewhere, and it's useful to have it confirmed.

All the best,

Sarah

(Above e-mail address is defunct. E-mail address is
)

Melania

April 4th 05, 08:16 PM

> OK, that it'll be something that'll happen. The problem is that I
> think DH thinks that Jamie'll start sleeping through the night
shortly
> after starting to take solids.

I don't think there's a whole lot of correlation there. I think some
babies are more likely to sleep through early and others not,
regardless of starting solids.

He wants to have him spending the night
> in his own cot by the time he's around 8 months old, which is not
> realistic for me if he's still nursing this often at night.

For me, just getting ds down to 1 or 2 nurses at night was huge!! But
he's been fully off the breast for almost 5 months now, and night
weaned for going on a year, and he still wakes once at night about half
the time. I weaned at 12 months and was still waking up in the night at
age 5 or 6 - it definitely doesn't go away with solid foods or weaning,
and yet other children will consistently sleep through from a
relatively early age (I think at 8 mo they're the exception rather than
the norm, though!).

As usual, Larry's pretty spot on about the night nursing and night
waking, etc.

Melania
Mom to Joffre (Jan 11, 2003)
and #2 (edd May 21, 2005)

toto

April 4th 05, 11:31 PM

On 4 Apr 2005 11:59:20 -0700, wrote:

>OK, that it'll be something that'll happen. The problem is that I
>think DH thinks that Jamie'll start sleeping through the night shortly
>after starting to take solids. He wants to have him spending the night
>in his own cot by the time he's around 8 months old, which is not
>realistic for me if he's still nursing this often at night.

I think many kids are down to one night nursing by 8 months. Mine
certainly were.

--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Nikki

April 5th 05, 04:54 AM

wrote:

> Oh, but that's exactly the kind of story I want to hear!

Ok - You asked for it :-)

> there are things you wish you'd done differently, then I can learn
> something, and if it was just an unavoidably difficult situation then
> at least I can prepare myself for the possibility of it going badly
> when we try it.

I had a novel written and mercifully snipped most of it ;-) It is still
long!

Hunter was my first and I think his situation was fairly unavoidable.
Sleeping with/on someone and comfort nursing were hardwired but sleeping
with his mother (and no one else) was deeply ingrained by how we handled
things.

Luke started out as an awesome sleeper. By 4.5mos I was very tired and he
was still waking a fair amount so I brought him to bed. From then on I
created a sleep associate, and a strong one at that. It turns out my mellow
baby was a very persistent and determined toddler and didn't take to change
very agreeable. He increased his night nursing and didn't decrease it until
I night weaned (for the most part) at 18 mos. He stopped napping well for
me but continued to do fine at daycare and with dh. He started waking a lot
if I wasn't beside him...even if he didn't want to nurse.

IMO the two important things if you want kids to not be in your bed long
term are 1) start them out in their own bed ASAP and leave it that way. Try
to get up, nurse, and return them to their crib until about 5am or so. This
only applies to babies that can do this. Hunter wasn't even close so I
couldn't have done this without a lot of drama from him. In Luke's case it
was just painful to *me* :-) 2) Don't do it all yourself no matter how much
sense that seems to make in the beginning. Dh being involved in bedtimes
and night wakings can be a lifesaver. I think it would have really helped
us.

Between 2.5yo and 3.5yo I take a lot of steps (start night in own bed, sit
beside them instead or lay beside them, sleep with someone besides me from
time to time etc.) that include a lot of drama to get them moving in the
direction of sleeping alone. Then I back off (once they'll go a good 3-4
hours without wakin up) and let it happen more on their time table. Hunter
was about 5y7m when he started spending the majority of his nights in his
own bed from start to finish. Luke will be 4 in a couple weeks and he
always comes into my bed at some point.

It was all very difficult for me for a lot of reasons that don't apply to
everyone though so take heart, lol.

--
Nikki