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Dr. Bill and Martha Answer:
How/when should you wean a baby from night feeds, if she sleeps with you? My baby is 6 months old, and she sleeps with me and my husband. She still wakes up frequently throughout the night and needs to be comforted back to sleep with my breast. I am not planning on weaning her yet (I actually don't know when yet), but I was wondering how it will be possible since she needs my breasts to sleep. Answer: Your baby has been used to going to sleep at your breast, and therefore when she wakes up she is wanting your breast to get back to sleep. This is called sleep associations -- the prop that a baby needs to go to sleep will be the one that she wants to go back to sleep. If you want to night wean her, it's going to be necessary to change this sleep association. This will be very difficult at 6 months if she sleeps with you because the breast is readily available to her and it's the easiest way to get her back to sleep. Yet, try these tactics: When she wakes up, try patting her on the back, or rocking her back to sleep. She is unlikely to accept you putting her back to sleep without the breast, a sort of "what's wrong with this picture?" Therefore, enlist the help of your husband to do a bit of nighttime fathering. After all, "nursing" means comforting? If you absolutely must night wean, you will probably need to increase the distance between you and your baby at night. Try a bedside cosleeper or move her crib next to your bed so she's still close to you, but not so close that she's going to want to wake up and nurse. The closer babies sleep to mothers, the more they will wake up to nurse, which is a wonderful style of nighttime nurturing. Yet, the key is to balance her needs for nighttime nurturing with your need for sleep. |
