12 Month Old Still Waking to Nurse During the Night

Just wanted to say I know how you feel, have 9mo baby boy still wakes 4 times a night to eat, first 2 dd's slept through by 8 weeks. Thoughts are with you to finally get some sleep soon.
Cynthia

I wish I could actually give a miraculous suggestion but my post is merely to sympathize. My first daughter was exactly the same way. We tried everything until the Dr. sternly suggested that we let her cry it out. After two hours I finally went in and she had jumped the crib rail ,crawled along the floor and was sweatily crawling against the wall under the changing table!! (she was 6 months) Her determination to be near me persisted, and her desire to nurse kept me up most nights until she was 18 months old at that point I told her she was a big girl now and her newborn brother was the baby. She got the picture and was weaned in a few days.

My point is some children are just mommy babies and at this time in their lives require your presence maybe more than is convenient, believe me I sympathize. My daughter is still a mommy-baby in a way but at twelve she is a very smart and well adjusted tween. Clingy? Not so much. Sorry if This is frustrating. One possible suggestion is to bathein warm water and change bedtime to 30 min later? Good luck, sister!

How long do you plan to nurse as she is 12 months and can have milk now? If you were planning on weaning her then I'd do it now and get on a plan and stick with it.

I firmly believe any baby still nursing 2-3 times a night is doing it to sooth herself and out of habit. You mentioned you have tried all the normal techniques such as the binkie, Dad etc. I would pick one of those methods and stick to it until she starts sleeping at night. You may need to just let her cry. I'm not a cry it out fan so when I got my son to sleep through the night, I just kept on going in and rocking him back to sleep. It worked just took a lot of patients and a lot of stick-to-ativeness.

Unfortunately there is no easy answer and whatever method you decide to use, you are just going to have to stick to it and not give up. Sorry I don't have a magic answer but good luck!! :)

for me, this did not stop until my daughter was 2 years old. it's all about what YOU want to do about it. it's your choice. i chose to nurse until 2 years of age... and then she just kinda stopped waking up. good luck!

If you want to stop the behavior you will have to make some hard choices. I personally weaned my daughter from night time feedings at about 6 months.
My suggestion would be to have your husband get up and give her a bottle of breast milk. She will loose interest pretty quick. Then you could just give her a bottle of water instead she will definitely loose interest after that. Are you interacting with her? If you hate the bottle idea then try not talking to her and sitting in the dark (not so great for you). That goes for if you do the bottle too. I bet you could definitely drop the 4:00 if you do the bottle.
At 12 months she should not need the extra nutrition of the night time feedings her solid food should be covering those nutritional requirements. She just likes the comfort of snuggling with mommy.
This worked for me. No crying. Use the bottles.

OMG! I could have written your question, I had the same problem with both of my daughters. Here's what's working. When she wakes, dad goes down and turns on the light, changes her diaper and offers her a bottle of formula. She's breastfed and hates the stuff. Tries to make it unpleasant. If she was really hungry she'd take it. She's not waking anymore, as she was waking out of habit, not hunger. You can also try offering cold cow's milk or water. She is now sleeping 10-12 hours at night! You have to make it not worth waking up for and eventually she won't!

Hi H.,

my name is Veronique and I have an almost 5 year-old daughter as well as a 14 month-old who would wake up a lot too and is doing much better now. Bedtime is 8PM and she still wakes up once in a while at around 4 or 5AM but I don't feed her any earlier than 6. She shares a room with her sister and I used to feed her so she wouldn't wake her sister up but after a while, I just couldn't handled having that much interrupted sleep and made the decision to train her. It worked, even though she has a few re-lap once in a while where I feel the need to give a quick nibble in the rocking chair if it's close to 5AM and then put her back in her crib where she would fall back asleep for an hour or two.

When I made the choice to cut the habit of her waking up in the middle of the night, I stayed with it for a few days (some moms say it takes no more than 3 or 4 days but it took her about a week. I would vary different techniques or simply just improvised, depending on my energy level, but most importantly, I stayed consistent every day and didn't give in. You have to stick with it once you've made the decision.

First, I would trade beds with my older daughter so she would stay asleep because it honestly took a little while (30 to 45 minutes the first couple of days) but I would still not give in. It took a huge amount of patience but it was worse it!. I would either try to rub her back making a shshsh... sound. Of course she would not go for it and would stand up in her crib for me to pick her up. I would gently lay her back down back and forth until she would hopefully understand that there was no other option. If I got tired, I would lay down in my other daughter's bed half asleep and either sang lullabies softly or going "shshshshshsh" for a very long time until she finally gave in exhausted and went back to sleep. I found this to work the best when I had no more patience in me or felt to tired to keep standing up. Remember that you have to prepare your mind to go through this with love and yet determination knowing that it is important for you to take care of yourself and get the rest you need. You have to want to do this for complete success.

Don't get me wrong though, some nights I thought I simply couldn't handle it anymore and would just storm out of the room before getting angry and ask my husband to take over and give it a shot, after coming down, I would take over and try again. Sometimes my husband would go in first, especially towards the end of the battle since she knew then she was just simply not getting any snack, and sometimes I would.

She is now easy to put down, and it only takes a few seconds to put her back to sleep if she happens to wake up in the middle of the night.

Of course, keep in mind that they are different ways for every one but I have to admit that this one works. I also feels that it is an important stepping stone for them to learn new boundaries. It gets harder as they get older. So I wish you the best of luck and would love to hear about the progress. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Warm regards,

Veronique

She is still nursing at night because you are still allowing her to. My boys stopped night nursing before they hit 1 month, because they no longer need night feedings past the first 10 days of life. Babies will, however, continue as long as the are allowed to. CIO method does not require you just let her cry. You go in and comfort every 5 minutes until she is calm, you just do it without food, or even picking her up if you can help it. I would rub my little guys backs/bellies and sing softly. If they started crying after I left I would wait another 5 minutes. However, your daughter is already 12 months and does not know how to self comfort or put her self to sleep, so teaching her these things at this older age will be more difficult. I never had to go in more then once with my boys, but we started at birth. At first she will fight harder, cry harder, try to manipulate you into giving in to her. If you hold your ground and stay consistent you will be rewarded in the end, with a good nights sleep.

All of my children waked in the night to nurse until they learned how to get to sleep without me - namely, until I had them cry it out. My husband was VERY against this, so my middle son was almost a year before I had him cry it out. I always went in after 5 or 10 minutes to check on them/comfort them, but no picking them up. With my daughter it helped when I gave her the shirt that I was wearing - over a year later it is still her "blankie." Cry it out is the only thing that I have ever gotten to work to get my kids to sleep through the night.

I guess I'm not sure what your question is. If you don't want to let her CIO, then don't. There's no reason she needs to. My daughter was also waking multiple times a night to nurse when she was 1 and was sleeping through the night in her own bed and room before she was 21 months.

Hi H.,.
you have soo many other good responses already. and honestly I have to take the kids to school.. & I didn't get to all of them.

My first thought was ... growth spurt. If your daughter is in a growth spurt it would cause both the waking and the hunger.

From you schedule, I really only see a concern for the 4 am waking,.. (perhaps the 6 if she still sleeps until about 9.)

so let her nurse at 12:30 and 6 am. and try eliminating the 4 am first... then the 6... then lastly in a couple months 12:30.. not all at one time. my boys needed the extra boost of milk at midnightish to make it to morning.

also.. the 6 am one could be cured with waking up earlier and starting the day. but as I am not a morning person.. this wouldn't have been my first choice ;)

good luck & restful sleep :)

I know how hard that schedule can be. Hang in there, it will get better. I don't have any advice, just wanted to share my experience for what its worth. My son slept through the night almost from the day he came home from the hospital. My daughter was just like yours. The first time she slept through was when she was 18 months old. We treated them exactly the same and tried everything to get my daughter to sleep better. My husband and I have concluded that you just have to accept them and their schedules as they are. Every baby does at some point, start sleeping all night, but I don't believe there is anything you can do to force it before they are ready. Good luck :-)

I trained both of my kids to sleep through the night by 4-6 months old by keeping them on a feeding schedule throughout the day (No nursing snacks). By 8 weeks, both kids were getting up 1 to 2 times and by the time they doubled their birth weight, I cut it back to one time or none it all. I let them cry it out for 30 minutes. If they didn't fall asleep within 30 minutes, I would go in and pick them up for a minute and put them back down. It took a couple nights and then boom, it happened. Nothing awful will happen to your child by letting them cry a bit. My 3 year old son has been a great sleeper ever since and my 4 month old is on the road to sleeping through the night. Good luck!

I really believe the only way to end this behavior is to just stop allowing it. By letting her nurse you are reinforcing the behavior.

To make it easier, i'd advocate
1) letting your husband soothe her - perhaps with a cup of water, but not with any milk or formula. If you go in there, its going to be a lot harder than if your husband does it (because of her expectations of you).
2) try removing one feeding at a time. Like, stop the 4 am feeding, and once that it removed, stop the 12am feeding, etc.

Its going to be rough for a few nights, but i think its the quickest, most effective, technique in the long haul.

this is well within the range of what is normal for a one-year-old (in fact my daughter woke up much more often than that when she was this age). she will sleep longer stretches as she grows - life is short, and her time as a baby will end before you know it. i would strongly encourage you to continue to meet her nighttime needs - she is waking at night because she needs you, and you can continue to reassure her that you are there for her. Letting her cry only teaches her that her needs are not important. it would be much easier to meet her nighttime needs if you cosleep, either in the same bed or with a cosleeper or mattress right next to yours, so that you can easily roll over to nurse her and then roll back to sleep yourself. you might be able to gradually eliminate maybe the 4 am feeding, by soothing her to sleep in some other way (rocking, massage etc).

Hi H.!
What worked for me at that age was telling my 11-month old son during the day that we were not going to nurse during the night anymore. I nursed him when he went to bed and we nursed when he woke up. So, for a few days (or maybe up to a week) I would tell him during the day that we don't nurse during the night anymore and we only nurse in the morning when it is light. Then the first night when he woke and wanted to nurse I explained that we don't nurse during the night, but we can nurse in the morning. He cried a bit and fussed but was back asleep in about 10 minutes (I stayed and rubbed his back). The next night he did not wake to nurse! I kept the bedtime and morning nursing routine until about 16 months at which time we stopped the morning nursing. He now only nurses about 2-3 minutes before going to bed.

For us, it was easier then what I imagined. As you know each child is different but at 12 months she understands what you tell her. She is only nursing because she has gotten used to you helping her fall asleep but she can do it on her own.

Good luck!

My daughter was still waking to nurse at 12 months. She would wake 1-2 times per night. I was wanting to start weaning her so I got up and rocked her back to sleep instead of nursing. She resisted at first, but eventually got over it. It took about a week or so. I nursed her to nap and to sleep until she was 15 months, when she weaned completely. The rocking at night was exhausting, but it did eventually work out for us.

Hi H.,

Just a word of sumpathy from me as well. My daughter night weaned at about 14 months, so I was kept up at night for a while as well.
We are against CIO, so what I did was to go in and rock her back to sleep instead of nursing her. Eventually she just needed a pat on the back when waking and finally she started sleeping through the night.
Take comfort in knowing that this won't last forever... Good luck!