I may have mentioned while I was pregnant, that I planned to breastfeed. I am almost 9 months into our proud breastfeeding journey. I currently don’t pump much because I am with Landon virtually 24 hours a day. There is really no need for him to take a bottle, therefore he has only had one a handful of times. Being with Landon all this time does make me exhausted. I nurse round the clock, on demand. However, Landon does not sleep through the night. In fact he has fallen into the habit of waking every hour to two hours to comfort nurse. Not actually eat, just pacify himself.
Do you have any clue what type of zombie I look like? For months I have not had more than about 2 hours of straight sleep. This is not working for my household. I need rest. When Landon wakes, like he does frequently, I attempt to just rock him back to sleep. But he fights me trying to push his body down repeatedly, near my breasts where he knows he has comfort if I expose them. If I allow him to comfort nurse, he latches, and does not even suckle enough for me to have a let down, but wakes if I try to unlatch him.
So I did a bit of research and came to the conclusion of gradual night weaning. I found information about night weaning on the KellyMom site. I know my child is getting enough calories and should be able to go 4-5 hour stretches without nursing at this age. Here is the plan that we have already started.
When Landon wakes, I will still attempt to rock him back to sleep.
If he starts fighting me, I give him to daddy, that does not have any milk in his breasts.
Landon’s last nursing session is no later than 9:30pm. (He usually is asleep by this time.
Only offer the breast once between 12am-2am and again after 5am.
We have been practicing this routine for about 4 nights so far. Tonight is the fourth and probably the worst. Landon did great on nights 2 and 3. The only kicker was the fact that my body was used to frequent wakings and I could not get back to sleep. Hopefully eventually I will be able to sleep the longer stretches also. My thoughts are if we can keep with this routine, after a week we will get these longer stretches of sleep and eventually cut out the midnight feeding and just keep the 5 am one.
I’m writing this in case anyone else has the same issue that I have had. It’s hard to find other breastfeeding moms that has dealt with the same situation that you have. Hope this info is useful to my fellow breastfeeding mothers.