Night weaning

Night weaning is often the first step in parent-led weaning. In this episode, I explore how you could approach it and I talk about Dr Jay Gordon’s method and Lyndsey Hookway’s habit-stacking approach. I also discuss why I believe leaving your nursling overnight is not an effective strategy for weaning.

Find out more about breastfeeding and chest feeding older babies and children in my book Supporting Breastfeeding Past the First Six Months and Beyond: A Guide for Professionals and Parents

Follow me on Twitter @MakesMilk and on Instagram  @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com

Resources mentioned in this episode - 

Lyndsey Hookway IBCLC
Dr Jay Gordon - Sleep, Changing Patterns in the Family Bed

This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

Transcript

Hi. I'm Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself Makes Milk, that was my superpower at the time, because I was breastfeeding my own two children. And now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end. And I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end. So join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing. And also, sometimes really, really hard. We’lll look honestly and openly about that process of making milk. And of course, breastfeeding and chestfeeding are a lot more than just making milk.  

00:46

Lots of families don't ever night wean. Their child naturally extends their intervals between feeds at night, and wonder they sleep through the next day they sleep through again. Or it might be that the child is waking up, but honestly no one really minds, they just feed and quickly go back to sleep and the feeding parent may not even fully wake up. And if regular night waking is not causing anyone distress, it does not mean that anything has to change. When it comes to sleep, I will often be signposting to Lyndsey Hookway. She's a sleep expert. She's an IBCLC. And she reminds us that, you know culturally, we often hear this message that young children are supposed to sleep from 7pm to 7am. But as she says not all children asleep like this, and actually she uses this phrase, culturally incompetent, it's a culturally incompetent idea to assume that all children or all adults, for that matter, have this big block of undisturbed sleep. Some people believe that they have to start night weaning because their child is waking. And they assume that that is causing them harm. And they're assuming that they have to change that because their child is supposed to have this big block of sleep. And Lyndsey says we just need to check that we're actually not projecting we might be tired, we might be exhausted, we might be struggling with with waking. But quite often, our toddler is not fragmented sleep is not the same thing as sleep deprivation. Now if parents do want to night when because they want to improve their own sleep, fair enough. But night weaning does not necessarily improve your sleep because your little person may still wake up and still need help to get back to sleep. And you don't have the magic tool of breastfeeding anymore, you're going to have to develop other co regulation techniques. night weaning is not something that guarantees your child is suddenly going to start to sleep through. It is really very normal for a little person to still need some assistance at night. And you're going to need to be upskilled and doing that. And you know, it's important to think that through because breastfeeding at night, it's basically the equivalent of giving your child some sedatives, I mean oxytocin and accomplices to chi Nina. You know there are literally sedatives in breast milk that help your child get back to sleep and, and you actually benefit from the oxytocin that helps you get back to sleep as well. So you could be in a situation where without those sedatives it is taking your child a little bit longer to get back to sleep. 

03:14

So if you are absolutely in crisis mode when it comes to your own sleep, night weaning is not something you can do easily in response to a crisis. That process of night weaning will initially take more effort and energy. And if a parent feels like they're in crisis, ideally, they're going to get support from other adults to help them get to a place where they then can review the situation neutrally, and maybe then have the capacity to start night weaning if it's still felt. That's what they need to do. So if someone is going to go ahead with night weaning, what are some of the approaches, so if it's a younger baby, you're going to be substituting the breast for a bottle, they are still going to be needing to be fed. But that's not going to be the recommendation for a toddler because we're not ideally using bottles beyond 12 months, that's the NHS recommendation. But also, to be honest, the desire to breastfeed at night is very often not about the milk itself anyway, it's very often about that emotional connection, using you as a co regulation tool, and your breast being the magic way that helps them feel connected and safe and loved, and then helps them feel safe enough to go back into the next sleep cycle. Sometimes we do need to consider food and liquids a bit, you know, some toddlers will get thirsty at night. They may not eat massive amount of solids in the day and their overnight calories may be a significant portion of their intake. So we might need to have a cup of water on hand we might need to do a little bit of a juggle around nighttime versus daytime solids. We might need to sort of realign that, that day night calorie balance. But for most older nursing things, we are starting with an assumption that we're really talking about the breast as a method to transition between sleep cycles. It's not really about milk. It's about how their body knows to move from one sleep cycle to the next sleep cycle. It is their coregulation tool of first choice. I mean, why not it tastes great, it's loving and wonderful, it feels safe, it's what they've always been used to, you can see why they might choose that. Now, that doesn't mean they're going to be thrilled about losing it. A parent has a right to make changes around the breastfeeding pattern. And a nursling has a right to their feelings, too. Now, parents sometimes contact me and say, they really want to win gently. And what that is often code for is I don't want my child to be sad. I mean, fair enough, would not be the dream. I mean, of course, we would love to have a little button that switches off our child's attachment to breastfeeding and our child's love for breastfeeding. But that would mean weaning when your child really wouldn't mind and you're not in that place. 

05:56

In most cases, if you're in that place, your child would actually be on a self weaning journey. And just about to self wean anyway. So if your child is not choosing to voluntarily and breastfeeding, there is probably going to be some sadness. Now that can be really tough as parents, because we are hardwired to not put ourselves first, that's really going to mean those guilt buttons being pushed. But that doesn't mean that sometimes we still have to, we shouldn't move forward, if we need to, we still do sometimes have to move forward. So that sadness may not be avoidable. Our children may still be angry and sad. And we're going to be there to accept their feelings and support them through them. How quickly can that process of night weaning happen, so different opinions around this, you will find an article online by Dr. Jay Gordon, called Sleep Changing Patterns in the Family Bed. And in that article, by the way, he assumes that co sleeping is a natural state of affairs. He suggests that a parent chooses a core of seven hours of sleep, for example, you know, 11pm to 6am. And this is the time when you're going to try and change the patterns in the family bed. By the way, he doesn't suggest doing this under 18 months. So for the first three nights, if a child wakes before 11, before those core hours, nothing changes, they can just breastfeed back to sleep as usual. But if they wait within those core hours, a parent will initially breastfeed but then leave the child awake and settle them to sleep using another method. So Dr. Gordon says, you know, expect them to be angry, expect them to be sad. But if they're in the arms of a loving adult, that doesn't mean they're going to come to harm. So the nursling has to learn to fall asleep without breastfeeding. Then he suggests that for the second set of three nights, when they wake in those core hours, you're not breastfeeding at all, you are just settling them back to sleep without the breastfeed. And then as the days go on, you continue settling them back to sleep without a breastfeed and gradually start winding down how heavy the coregulation techniques are and how much intervention you're giving them. Now, that method is pretty stark, it can be valuable if a parent is really at breaking point. And they don't have a partner or a support network. And actually, I guess one of the things I really appreciate about this article is Dr. Jay Gordon, who very much comes from attachment parenting background, is giving permission to parents to care for themselves. And for lots of parents who found this article. The relief is not so much from the methods described. But from that sense of I'm allowed to do this. This is a doctor who's passionate about children's needs and co sleeping and attachment parenting, and he says I'm allowed to do this. 

08:40

But in reality, parents may choose to go slower rather than having, you know, three days and then three days. And there can be some barriers to this method within some families. So some nurse things will fall back to sleep so quickly on the breast, that the parent literally does not have time to remove them in order to settle them in another way. Or sometimes the parents fall asleep super quickly as well. You've also got some issues around you know, you've chosen those core hours. So if a child wakes at 10.55, they can breastfeed back to sleep but they can't at 11:03pm. And I think for some children, inconsistent messages can leave them feeling a bit confused and can make weaning tough. With an older nurse thing, you may be able to explicitly explain your approach and maybe even show the hours on a clock and explain what's happening. If a child has never experienced any limits about around breastfeeding, they make it quite a shock to the system. So you might want to start with putting some boundaries in in the day, even if you're not fully day weaning and your aim is just to note when having some boundaries, the concept of baby sometimes being tired or mommy's tired or babies need to rest. It can be a little bit easier to first introduce limits at a time when you're awake, you're conscious and you can provide some emotional support rather than starting in the middle of the night which can be a difficult time for everybody. So during those first three nights with the Gordon method, it is quite an ask for a child to fall asleep without the breast, if all they've ever known is falling asleep on the breast, you know, that's the one habit that worked well, they loved it. And now it's gone. And we're literally asking for them to do something they may not physically know how to do. Plus, the person who's done this to them is offering you know, hugs and cuddles. And they may feel quite angry towards that person, and not really in the mood for a cuddle. So we may need to slow things down a bit, and actually take a bit more time to learn other associations, other co regulation techniques, and help the child feel safe to fall asleep in different ways. 

10:42

I mentioned Lindsay Hookway. Earlier, Lyndsey Hookway talks a lot about habit stacking. So we're going to stack some other habits on top of that breastfeeding, to create that safe association with other ways of falling asleep. So when the breastfeeding does get snuck out, those other familiar habits are there, we're not leaving a vacuum where a child literally doesn't know how else to fall asleep. Now, the habits you choose will be different for every family. Some children will be quite irritated by patting and stroking and that can actually wind them up. Some families do really well with stuff to do with voices I find that often works well for children sort of two years plus, so maybe a parent telling a story telling A sleepy story. So it's not a story that's exciting and stimulating and, you know, adventurous, it's very gentle, and it's fairly simple. The language may be quite repetitive, you know, you might talk about, you know, it's time for sleeping, and the animals are sleeping. And, you know, let's fly on a cloud and watch all the animals falling asleep, you might do some gentle singing, you might have a white noise machine with ocean sounds. I quite like the idea of using your phone to record your voice. So you might tell some of those sleepy stories, and then have some recordings on your phone. So when it's two o'clock in the morning, and you're like I have not got the energy to select another story, you can just hit a play button on your recording and listen to something you've recorded previously. So for older nurses that concept of using your voice as the actual tool to help them fall asleep, almost like a guided meditation on my website, which is Emma Pickett, breastfeeding support.com on my resources page, you'll find a bedtime meditation created for me, by the lovely know how to trust court read, she's got a gorgeous voice and she's recorded a bedtime meditation for children who are no longer breastfeeding to sleep. It's a really lovely model, you might just use the hand as version of yourself. I've worked with parents who've done that and it's worked really well. Well, you might use her bedtime meditation as a model for something that you create yourself. There's an audio file on my website that you can download. An older child might actually want some input on what they could use for their new sleep habit. You know, you might do some roleplay in the daytime talk about how people fall asleep. You know, how does daddy fall asleep? How does your partner fall asleep? How do How does a friend fall asleep? Play bedtimes get some dollies and some Teddy's. They all have different ways to fall asleep. How can we help this teddy fall asleep? You know this teddy isn't going to have mommy milk at night anymore? What can we do to help them fall asleep? Yes, this teddy might be feeling a bit angry and sad about not having mummy milk? How can we help them? Use roleplay to work through some of these emotions? Breastfeeding toddlers often haven't attached to a cuddly toy. Why would they? We were effectively their cuddly toy. But when you are thinking about knowing when he this can be a good time to introduce it for the first time. Again, give the child a bit of agency let them choose who their nighttime friends going to be. 

13:41

Another really valuable tool during the weaning process, if you're not winning is a floor bed. I really think that for many parents who have been co sleeping and want to move to having a little bit more separation at night, the court has probably run out of steam, the cot journey has probably sailed. I think sometimes parents imagine Oh, if I can get my child back into that cot, you know, they won't be so close to me, they won't smell the milk. Maybe they're asked to breastfeed less. But if a child has been used to co sleeping, that additional physical separation is not really going to leave them with that sense of safety around nighttime, which is what you really, really want. Probably closeness is going to be needed. This is not the time for separation. This is actually the time to to lean into that desire for closeness even if it's not forever. If we insert a physical barrier of a cord alongside the removal of the breast, we're really potentially going to reinforce that feeling of loss and isolation. So floor beds are great floor beds mean that you have a chance to get some rest as well. And a floor bed is a chance as a place where you can gradually remove yourself if you want to leave in the child in that sort of stable, safe space. Before you know it when talking to your child is helpful. This is not something that comes out of the blue But equally, it's not something that you necessarily want weeks of preparation. Being gentle around weaning is not the same thing as being very, very slow. A young child is probably not going to have a very sophisticated sense of time. And concepts like next month or even next week don't necessarily have a lot of meaning. So maybe it's something like in a few days, that might be more helpful. So you probably want to start by talking about the abstract sense that night weaning happens for everybody. It happens for the characters in Paw Patrol, it happened for Peppa Pig, it happened for that boy in the supermarket, it happened for your cousin who doesn't breastfeed anymore. It happens for children in these picture books that you're reading about. So not for them, we're not immediately focusing on them, but generally, night winning happens. And then you want to start talking about their situation and the fact that night weaning is happening for them. And that, as I said, probably is not more than just a few days notice for when the change is going to happen. So you're going to talk about the fact that babies will be sleeping at night, it's going to be hard, you're going to be there to help them. You've been habit stacking for a while. So hopefully, you've already built up some other associations and some other things that helped me feel safe with falling asleep. Then the morning prior to the big night, we're going to try night weaning, you want lots of reminders throughout the day. So you've may have been using some picture books for a while, during that phase, where you're talking more abstractly, nurses when the sun shines is a really popular one. It's a picture book, it's very simple. But it's a very basic concept that when it's dark, we don't breastfeed, works really well in the UK in the summertime, not so successful in the wintertime, when it's dark at 4pm. So you might want to have some kind of clock or device that shows symbols of day and night to indicate to your child when mourning is and when nighttime is what's important to emphasise is that the parent is going to be there to support the child, wherever they're feeling. We're not implying that they need to be a good boy or try hard. We're not praising them for not being upset. All feelings are welcome. We're not going to praise a child who doesn't show distress, we want them to know that we're there for them. Whatever they're feeling, you may decide not to move straight away to full night weaning and to say, you know, breasts to sleeping at night, you might potentially go through a transition where there may be only allowed to feeds at night. Or you might perhaps have a transition where they're only allowed shorter feeds at night, perhaps only count to 10 or count to five, and then they've got to fall asleep another way. Some children do better with that sort of partial night weaning and just having a limited amount of feast. That's particularly works if they're older, and they can understand that concept that other children do do better, with a clear message that there's no milk until morning. So it's not like when you're winning a baby where you might do drop one bottle, wait a few days, drop another bottle. That inconsistency for an older child can be a bit confusing. Why is it we can breastfeed at this time of night but not breastfeed at that time of night? So sometimes it's that consistency that is needed. And if you do partially night when you can get stuck in this negotiation mode, I often speak to parents who do feel their children managed better, with full night weaning a long light side loving support, after a phase of habit stacking after lots of talking preparation, rather than removing feeds one by one. It's very much still gentle because it happens alongside emotional support. But it's that consistency that gives that child that sense emotional safety. 

18:37

Even if you've done all the prep, even if you've done the habit stacking, when you finally get to remove the breastfeeding, you may find that there are three or four difficult nights. So this is as I said, this is why you're not night weaning at crisis point. This is when your night wean when you've got a bit more energy to be able to approach this, you might look at your working patterns, you might try and take some leave you might work out there's another adult that can support you during the day. Now those nights are going to be hard, not least because the parents are going to be tired. But also you're going to get some feelings of guilt surfacing almost invariably. This is why it's really important that parents have spent some time reflecting on their own motivation and owning their decision about why they're weaning. So if you're a parent who starts night weaning because you believe that your toddler will sleep better, and you don't want your toddler to have a broken night, you are going to really waver at three 3am When your toddler is doing anything but sleeping and screaming and pleading with you, you've got to know in your heart while you are moving forward with weaning for yourself and not feel badly about that. That doesn't mean you can't change your mind. You know something really isn't instinctively feeling right. If you really feel like you need to breastfeed your child despite all your best efforts of giving the message that you're going to be weaning. You know, it's absolutely fair enough that you follow those instincts, but that probably doesn't mean it's fair to then try again the next night. Because as I said it this is all about consistency. So if you needed to breastfeed after bleeding and you needed to breastfeed them, I would probably suggest you wait a while, potentially a few weeks before you go back to winning again, and spend some time really reflecting on the preparation and what else you can do to get yourself ready, you need to take some time to get to a place where you can be consistent. The worst situation to be in a situation where your child gets extremely distressed, you tried to hold out, after 40 minutes, you end up breastfeeding. And they actually end up learning that you are going to breastfeed that that boundary is not being held. And there, you're essentially reinforcing the message that if they scream loud enough, the breastfeed is going to happen. So forgive yourself if that's the decision you've made to breastfeed in that moment. But then don't expect your child the next night to believe that that boundary is going to be held, you'll need to do some rethinking before you go back to night winning again. 

20:47

Sometimes, when parents are really desperate, they may be encouraged by other people to go away and leave their child culturally, that's very common. Often older relatives say things like oh, you know, just leave them. That's what I did. I left them for a night I went away with my friends for the weekend, I left them with my in laws, it's a very accepted way to end nighttime breastfeeding or even attempt to wean entirely by leaving your child. This is not something I'm a fan of. We'll talk about this more next week. But you literally cannot walk away from this difficult moment. You know, it's very tempting, it's very appealing to imagine that you don't have to see your child in pain that another adult will take that burden. But there are two main problems. First of all, it often doesn't work, the toddler is likely to be at the age where they have separation and trust issues. And when they are finally reunited with you, how do they want to repair that relationship that's been ruptured, probably by more breastfeeding. So they will literally leap on top of you. And, you know, continue to breastfeed with a new level of enthusiasm and a fear of its loss. So it could be after a few difficult nights, you're not just back to square one, you're back to square minus five. Secondly, the idea that we leave our children in that moment of weaning is really avoiding a conversation that needs to happen. You know, it's ghosting our child essentially, we cannot avoid that reality, if we're going to be emotionally sensitive to them. You know, emotions have to be dealt with head on and the child needs you to demonstrate, I am not leaving you. We're not going to be joined at the nipple anymore. But I am here for you. This is not a loss of me, this is a loss of just one little aspect of our relationship. I'm the person that knows you best, I know how you are feeling. And I am going to do my very best to support you through this loss. For most children, this is their first significant loss in their life. When the breastfeeding parent leaves the home, the child is losing all of you. Even if there's another loving partner there to offer them support. For a child that's not separation that is desertion. But this is not just about the child and how the child feels. This is also about you too. If you leave that home, you are not learning how to parent without breastfeeding, you are not upskilling yourself. In co regulation at night, you are not practising how to help your child settle back to sleep without breastfeeding. None of this is completely avoidable, you have to steer into the skid. That's a phrase that the psychotherapist Philippa Perry uses, you're going to have to confront this head on. If you want to put limits in place around breastfeeding, your child is going to need your emotional support. And this is a great opportunity for them to be supported by you through this loss. 

23:35

If you're tempted to do night wean because sleep is a really difficult area for you as a family, it may be valuable to just possibly take a moment to look at the whole sleep picture. And that might mean talking to professional sleep consultant. That is not the same thing as a sleep trainer. That is not the same thing as someone who's going to be teaching you to use extinction techniques or to leave your child alone. You want somebody who understands normal sleep patterns and understands parent child attachment. So in the UK, a good place to start is actually holistic sleep coaching. You can read more about the underpinning philosophy in Lyndsey Hookway's books. In other countries, you're going to need to look for professionals who understand the value of natural term breastfeeding and understand how little people build relationships with other people in a healthy attached way. You may need to do some investigation or get some local recommendations. It may be that naps need tweaking it may be that bedtime needs tweaking it may be that there's not enough sleep pressure at night and that's what's causing these additional wakings night weaning may not necessarily solve all those problems. So in the next episode, we're going to talk more about daytime weaning, we're going to talk about full parent led weaning when the child is a booby monster, which is my shorthand for saying they're really not ready to breastfeeding at all, but the parent is ready to breastfeeding. If your child is really far away from self weaning and you really want to end breastfeeding? Where do you even start? We'll talk more about that in more detail next episode.

25:11

Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram @EmmaPickettIBCLC and on Twitter @MakesMilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.  This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.