I don't know if this is technically a weaning question or a sleep question, but I'm hoping those of you who have been through this before might have some advice. T is 10 months old and sleeps through the night about half the time. I know he's getting enough during the day, he's a great eater and is still on 4 bottles per day. My problem is when he does wake up at night. Currently the only way we've been able to get him back to sleep is with a bottle. Every time. Which is fine except that he's getting closer and closer to bottle weaning time and we're starting to wonder how in the world we will deal with night wake ups when we don't have the bottle to turn to. I know he can fall asleep without it...he doesn't need it for naps and though he has a bottle at bedtime, he can also fall asleep no problem without it. The only time it seems to be a crutch is for middle of the night wake ups. I just can't figure out how to soothe him without a bottle. Any brilliant suggestions? Tough it out and just figure the wake ups will be long, loud and miserable for a while? I'm happy to rock him to sleep and do currently. We will not be sleep training in any sense that doesn't involve soothing him, I just want to figure out how to more effectively soothe him without the bottle! We are about an hour into a wake up just three hours after his bedtime bottle. I know he isn't hungry. Help!
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When I night weaned off breastfeeding I started offering water. I might move his bedtime bottle to not right before bed and at bedtime/wake ups offer water. My 2 year old still takes her cup of water to bed every night:
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We made the bottle smaller by an ounce or so every night. Then offered water. Then offered a binky. For DS it worked like a charm. DD is one and still nurses all damn night so...
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Can you worry about this in 2-3 months? Make it the last bottle you wean him off of? By then he will hopefully be waking up far less and won't need it.
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@catomd00: @MrsSRS: Yeah this is our plan. I'm afraid we will encounter the same problem when we finally take away the water bottle but maybe it will be so boring to him by then that he'll be ok with it.
@Pollywog: I can wait and probably will, just want to have an idea of the game plan. If it were every night or even on any sort of schedule I'd assume he was hungry and needed it. But he sleeps through often enough and when he wakes it's so random (and sometimes multiple times) that I really think it's just a comfort thing to go back to sleep.I know this is partly because we don't have a consistent nap schedule, but unfortunately I have no control over that. So we're doing the best we can knowing consistency is impossible at this point.
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Once we night weaned DS just slowly stopped waking up. Fingers crossed for you.
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