how I night-weaned my one year old, part two

 

It's been three weeks since I wrote my last baby sleep update. In that time I contracted the Sore Throat of Doom, which developed into the Hacking Cough of Despair, and I stopped recording every night of sleep. To recap: using this method, I was night weaning my baby, trying to get him to sleep through the night and go to sleep without help.

To start with: Peanut is completely weaned now, his choice. On the second night after I stopped night feeding I offered him a pre-bed feed and he just looked at me like, But we're done with this, right? Then I offered it again and he laughed at me(!) so I stopped. Since then I haven't breastfed and he's been fine with it.

Over the next week after my (painfully detailed) last update, things got better. Peanut was waking up once a night most nights. I would go in, sit by the bed and he would settle down and go back to sleep. Sometimes it would take five minutes, occasionally thirty, but he never got very upset.

Then he dropped that waking and just started sleeping through the night. Eleven hours, 6pm to 5am, every night.

Most nights he puts himself to sleep after a little cry. Occasionally I still have to go in and sit by the bed, but rarely for more than ten minutes. Hopefully as time goes on he won't need to have that cry before falling asleep, but it doesn't bother me. I've heard of magical babies who point to their crib when they want to go to sleep, but Peanut's motto is "rock and roll all night if possible, and also party every day unless you absolutely have to take a nap."

This was a very difficult journey, but it was worth it (ridiculous understatement) and I would strongly recommend it. I know that every baby is different, and I would never suggest that one method works for all babies, but I do think this one is worth a go if you want to try sleep training but don't want to (or aren't ready to) do cry-it-out.

Do you have any questions about it? Want to share your baby sleep horror stories?