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Home › Articles › Weaning › Lights out on Night Nursings

Lights out on Night Nursings

A Gentle Approach to
Night Weaning

By Teri Brown

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

The Foundation for Easy Night Weaning
In her book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night (McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Books, 2002), Elizabeth Pantley says that many babies have come to associate nursing with going to sleep. The trick is to nurse the child and then pull the nipple out before they go to sleep. This will comfort the child but teach him how to go to sleep on his own.

Another good idea is to change the bedtime routine. If you generally put your child down by nursing, try nursing just until your child relaxes. You can rub her back or walk her around the room to "seal the deal."

By getting your child to go to sleep in a different manner, you are setting the stage for retraining sleep patterns. When the child awakes at night, nurse her for just a few minutes, remove your nipple from her mouth and then do the same thing that you did to get her to sleep earlier. Your nights will be interrupted for a while longer, but patience will get your child to sleep through the night.

"It is important to understand that although a mom can feel very 'touched out' and ready to move on by the time a toddler is 2, it is a small amount of time in the grand scheme of things," says West. "Before the mom knows it, the child will be going on to another developmental stage."

Just like it is with starting solid foods and toilet training, West says if a child is pushed to do something before he is ready, it can be an emotionally stressful event. "But if we wait until the child is ready and gently 'encourage,' it goes very smoothly," she says.

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