Carrie Ford-Jones is now a mom to eight kids (including 10-month-old triplets!). But when she had her very first child, Dylan, she was determined to do everything by the book?literally. When her baby books said it was time for him to start sleeping through the night, she dutifully started to cut out his nighttime feeds. She worked hard to keep him on a schedule, too.
?I felt like I was always trying to make sure we could check off the next milestone,” she says. “He was about five months when I decided to sleep train and not feed at night, because the paediatrician said I didn’t need to anymore. But I made myself crazy trying to track the number of feeds and worrying that he should be learning to sleep through the night.?
Newborns need to be fed around the clock for the first few months, but will eventually be able to go for longer stretches without food. Of course, many sleep-deprived new parents would like those stretches to happen overnight. Getting a baby to stop breastfeeding, chestfeeding or bottle feeding overnight is what is meant by the term “night weaning.” (It has nothing to do with starting solids, or weaning from the breast entirely. It just means not nursing or bottle-feeding between the hours of, say, 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.) Why do some parents want to night wean"
Azura Goodman, a Hamilton, Ont.-area registered nurse and lactation consultant, has supported parents through the night-weaning process. Goodman says there are many rea...