# Night weaning as a single parent...



## mamabear0314 (May 13, 2008)

My baby is 21 months. I'm a single mom. I'm exhausted. I cosleep but he wakes to nurse several times in the night. I have two other kids so I've put off night weaning because I don't want his crying to wake them up. But at this point I just need to sleep! Any tips? Book recommendations? Anything? My older kids naturally night weaned when I got pregnant again...


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## Oceanspray (Nov 20, 2014)

I hear you on the exhaustion and effect on other children. I haven't been through what you have, but I think you might get a lot of advice if you post this in the breastfeeding threads here: http://www.mothering.com/forum/27-breastfeeding/

Good luck!


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## farmermomma (Oct 30, 2012)

Going through this as well. DS1 sleeps like a log though. Also the babe will still sometimes cry after nursing before going back to sleep so I feel like what's the point. 
I talked to a friend and she said her DS need to break the wake/nurse connection so they didn't nurse till after breakfast. I'm just aiming for daylight. Good luck. Keep me posted.


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## mamabear0314 (May 13, 2008)

Thanks mamas, I haven't started yet but I think I will as soon as all of the Christmas hubbub is done with.


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## Reyna_VLA (Dec 15, 2014)

Stay strong single mama and explore different options! My LO is half your sons age, but we just started training him in his Zipadee-Zip to sleep through the night. I had to change his feeding schedule and had to give him a some CIO to change his feeding schedule. lol. Not fun at all. I found this great article... I think the tips here may help you.

http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/he...ight-weaning-12-alternatives-all-night-nurser


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## Reyna_VLA (Dec 15, 2014)

mamabear0314 said:


> My baby is 21 months. I'm a single mom. I'm exhausted. I cosleep but he wakes to nurse several times in the night. I have two other kids so I've put off night weaning because I don't want his crying to wake them up. But at this point I just need to sleep! Any tips? Book recommendations? Anything? My older kids naturally night weaned when I got pregnant again...


Hey mama! How is your child sleeping now? Have you made any changes? What is working best for you?


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## zhiyuamed (Apr 27, 2015)

My LO is half your sons age, but we just started training him in his Zipadee-Zip to sleep through the night.


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## lilacvioletiris (Apr 3, 2011)

The Dr Sears link as really useful! Soon I need to wean my twins.


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## nivchek (Sep 2, 2004)

*Meet needs in other ways.*

I'm a mother to seven children, and I nursed four of them well past age 2... always with co-sleeping and night-nursing. Here's what I would do: night waking in children over 1 year is usually caused by hunger or thirst (or too-hot, too-cold, etc, but then it is easy to tell), so addressing these two contenders may limit the waking to one time, or maybe even zero after a while. Have a sippy cup with water or diluted juice available at bedside, and offer it first. And thenoffer a snack with some sugar/carb content, like animal crackers or raisins. If these awakenings are accompanied by a soaked diaper (as in, lots of pee in a short time), then offer the sweeter choices, because the excess urine is a sign that the child's blood sugar is dropping fast or has gotten quite low.

Another strategy is to limit your physical proximity at night. Sleep on opposite sides of the bed or separate mattresses if possible. Not too too far away, but enough to reduce the convenience factor!

Nighttime sugar crashes are often a sign of calcium gluconate deficiency, and supplementing that particular form of calcium helps in many cases.

Hope this is helpful! Good rest to you!


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## SuzyBelle (Sep 22, 2014)

It's not easy and will be exhausting for you for a while but you can try what I did and walk around and sing and do anything you can to get your LO back to sleep without needing a feed and just keep saying you will feed in the morning. Took a few days of doing this every wake up and my LO started to put herself back to sleep when she woke without needing a feed or with a bit of rocking if she didn't settle by herself. Although once she was teething I had to go back to feeding her at night as nothing else would work and then once the teeth were through, I had to break the habit again so not looking forward to the next teething episode but for now she is sleeping well. Good luck!


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## traceylina (Dec 13, 2013)

*Question for Nivchek*

Nivchek- thank you for you post. I'm curious about learning more about calcium gluconate deficiency, when I googled it quickly, I saw relations to hypoglycemia (?) My son is 20 months, he is quite big for his age. We cosleep in a small double mattress- which I am hopping to upgrade to a king sized soon!- and he nurses at night. I will nurse him to sleep, he usually wakes up 2-3 hours afterwards when I then go in and sleep with him, after that he wakes up many times, not sure how many, so I nurse him. I have noticed the soaked diapers- bc I can smell the pee in the diaper and feel the warmth. Last night I tried giving him a snack before bed but it didnt seem to help. How can determine if he has this deficiency? I dont know how to broach this with our pediatrician, she is holistic in many ways but seems opposed to colseeping and night nursing, especially at this age- I havent mentioned it to her in a while. I wouldnt feel comfortable just supplementing with something I didnt fully understand yet. Does this mean that he is not receiving enough calcium from foods? Do you have any suggestions where I can learn more about this? Thank you!- Nina


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## Good Enough Mum (Apr 3, 2007)

Hi, traceylina,

Speaking as a doctor... I have to say that talking about 'calcium gluconate deficiency' doesn't make a lot of sense.

Substances like calcium gluconate don't just float around in the system as calcium gluconate molecules. They separate out into the ionised forms, so that the calcium atoms are separate from the gluconate molecules. So, calcium is certainly needed in the body, and gluconate might be needed (I've never heard of any processes for which it's necessary, but can't rule it out), but there would be no physiological reason why you'd need to take them combined together in that specific form. Also, gluconate is actually just formed from atoms of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all of which are abundant in the body, so I can't see how it would be possible to be deficient in it. (It's similar to glucose molecules, hence the name.)

It's possible to be deficient in _calcium_, but, firstly, that doesn't cause drops in blood sugar. Secondly, milk is one of the main sources of calcium, so your LO will be getting plenty of it in his diet.If he gets more than his body needs, he'll just end up excreting more, and in a worst-case scenario this could actually cause a kidney stone due to the extra concentration of calcium in his urine (vanishingly unlikely in a child this age, but why even risk it when there's no need for it and it's not going to be helpful?)

I've also never heard of low sugar causing excess urination (in fact, excess urination is a well-known symptom of _high_ blood sugar, although that is extremely unlikely to be your LO's problem here) so I do have to question that statement as well.

By far the most likely scenario here is that your LO is simply nursing a lot at night because nursing is the way he can most easily get back to sleep after waking up at night, and the extra intake is causing him to pee more because all that liquid has to go somewhere! It's incorrect to say that hunger or thirst are the most common causes for waking up at night; children wake up at night because that's part of the normal sleep-wake cycle. A study that filmed young children throughout the night found that all of them - all, even the 'good sleepers' - would wake up several times at night. As in, they'd surface briefly and then settle straight back to sleep again. The issue with the children who didn't sleep well wasn't the waking up - that was *completely normal*. It was that they couldn't get back to sleep again after they woke up. They needed some help (nursing, rocking, etc.) in order to get back to sleep. If you normally nurse your LO to sleep, he may just not know a way to get back to sleep without nursing when he wakes up. So, the solution is to look at helping him learn how to do so. Can suggest a couple of things if you want ideas.


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## lauren (Nov 20, 2001)

The best thing that ever worked for me with three children was to talk about nursing 'not until the sun comes up.' The nice thing about older nurslings is that you can talk to them--unlike an infant. You can talk about the sun coming up and going down and they can look at it. You can make a big deal over this is the last nursie for the night and now we wait for the sun to come up!  

With all three of my babies, there was a little bit of crying in arms, which is much different from CIO, because you are still right there to reassure and rub back, head, etc. but it lasted maybe 3-4 nights and then, instead, they would start looking out the window to see if the sun was up yet. When the sun finally came up, there would be a big grin, then they would nurse, then get on with their day.

It's also nice to provide some empathy as you're doing this, because even though you are tired, it is a loss for the little one not to nurse at night.


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