Depending on how old your baby is, and how many feeds a night they have, and whether its breast or bottle, you have a few choices.
You can gradually reduce down the number of breastfeeds you offer each night, re-settling at the wake ups where you don’t want to feed. This can be were a sleep consultant can be useful, as we can help you come up with a strategy to re-settle your baby as they are learning to go back to sleep without a feed. This doesn’t mean we leave them to cry it out.
If you are bottle feeding, you can reduce down the volume of each bottle you are offering, and then re-settle your baby if they continue to wake after the bottles have been reduced to less than 50ml. Again if you need help with the re-settling and teaching your baby to go back to sleep without a bottle, we can help with this.
If your baby is only having 1 feed a night whether its breast or bottle, you could consider cutting it cold turkey and re-settling your baby, and teaching them to go back to sleep without a feed.
Just be careful when ever you are working on re-settling without a feed, it can be tempting to try to get your baby back to sleep as quickly as possible, which can in turn create new sleep props which have to be changed. Examples of accidental sleep props I see after night weaning is rocking to sleep, holding to sleep, and offering bottles of water. Any re-settling needs to be done with the mindset of how you can progressively do less and less in order to encourage your baby to put them selves back to sleep on their own once they are ready.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. We have helped thousands of parents night wean without crying it out, and we are all mum’s ourselves, we understand the emotional implications of night weaning.
