A while ago, I posted an article about the Natural Age of Weaning by Dr. Katherine Dettwyler. I recently found another article by the same person about childhood sleep patterns that I feel is very well written and worth a read. Meredith still doesn’t “sleep through the night” by most people’s definitions. Though most nights she will fall asleep for the night around 10 and often doesn’t wake up to nurse again until 5 or 6, which is more than good enough for me. After that, she tends to wake every hour or two until she actually gets up. I doze through most feedings and barely wake up. Some nights, she still wakes up several times at night to nurse though. She’s showing signs of starting to be able to fall asleep on her own without nursing, but the majority of the time still needs to nurse to sleep. There have been a few nights that I’m really tired and go to bed before her and Kris, and she will cuddle with Kris and they’ll read or watch a movie and she falls asleep doing that with him, but it’s only really happened when she’s been really tired.
This has been something that has been on my mind quite a bit the past couple of weeks, since I found out I am pregnant. She still nurses a lot, more than she eats. I’m okay with that. I trust that she will eat when she needs to eat, and that she is getting the nutrition she needs from my breastmilk. She’s growing well, healthy, and happy. She’s not a picky eater, she just doesn’t eat much. I’ve noticed she is starting to eat a lot more recently too. So far, nursing and being pregnant hasn’t bothered me at all. I’m hoping I’ll be one of those people who it never does. I’ve always had problems with oversupply, not undersupply, and last pregnancy I started having to wear breast pads around 22 weeks or I’d leak. (Apparently that’s really early for a first pregnancy.) So I don’t think my milk will dry up, or if it does hopefully it will only be for a short time. One of the reasons we waited to get pregnant (besides my cycles not coming back, ha!) was that I didn’t want her to be forced to wean if I am one of those women whose milk does dry up in pregnancy, especially since she still relies on it so much.
My concern (and even that is far too strong a word at this point; I’m not concerned, just thoughtful) is the night nursing. Meredith is a very light sleeper. When I’m in late pregnancy and tossing and turning, am I going to be waking her up each time? And if so, will I have to nurse her back to sleep every time, making it harder for me to get back to sleep? Trouble sleeping was one of my most annoying symptoms last time and has already started this time. What about after the baby comes? Will the baby wake Meredith up each time he or she wakes up in the night? I can’t side lie and nurse two kids, so that means I’d either have to sit up and nurse them both, or make one wait while I nurse the other. Meredith will be over two and a half, so I’m sure she would be okay waiting while I nurse the baby, but I don’t want to nurse them both every single time the baby wakes up.
Really it’s all conjecture at this point. In 8 months, it’s quite possible Meredith will be falling back to sleep on her own without nursing, or that she will be a heavier sleeper and wouldn’t wake up. But again, I don’t want to count on that, and I don’t want to night wean her. If she sticks to her current sleeping pattern of sleeping until 5 or 6 in the morning, or even waking more when she’s sick/teething, I’d be fine with that with a baby. My concern is having to nurse them both every time the baby wakes up.
Thinking about it, and talking it over with Kris, I think we may try and have her start the night on Kris’ side. We have two queen beds in our bedroom pushed up against each other. (Which is heaven by the way, I love having so much space!) Meredith and I sleep on one, and Kris sleeps in the other. But really it’s like one huge bed because obviously we can move around from one to the other at will. Occasionally Meredith does crawl over to his side for a cuddle. Our thought was that I could nurse her to sleep for the night on Kris’ mattress, and the first time she wakes up at night I’ll bring her back over to my side and she’ll stay there the rest of the night. Which means on the nights she sleeps until 5 or 6 I have space the whole night, and the nights that she is waking up more frequently I would bring her over earlier and be right there for when she needs to nurse. That gives me space to toss and turn when heavily pregnant without risk of waking her up, and when there’s a baby in the equation he or she would be less likely to wake her up too. And of course, if we try it and for some reason she is really unhappy about it, we’d drop it for now. I can’t see that happening though, she does love to snuggle with daddy.
I’ve read that even if your milk supply does dry up through pregnancy you should get some colostrum back fairly quickly.
My cousin did co-sleeping with her girls and although her oldest daughter was 3 when they had their second child, they found she often made a the choice herself where she wanted to sleep (when the baby was really little her husband slept across the hall because he worked full-time). Often if she lay with Daddy and read a book or watched a video and is she would fall asleep and she would stay with him. Not sure if that would have happened if she was still nursing in the night though.
From what I’ve read I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Your body and your child are adaptable to natural processes, I think you and Meredith will fall into a new schedule soon enough.
Thanks Natalie! I’ve heard often the older kids choose to sleep elsewhere when the baby comes because he/she keeps them awake. I will never ever tell her she can’t sleep in my bed, but I would like to make sure she’s aware there are even other options too, you know?
I’m not worried at all, even if she decides she hates sleeping in the other bed and only wants to sleep with me, we’ll figure things out. It might involve more thinking outside the box but we’re getting good at that.
Or it may end up not being any problem at all anyway and she could turn into a really heavy sleeper who I can toss and turn around to my heart’s content without worry.
I was worried about this too. I did plan to night wean Sam, but it was amazingly easy so I think she must have been ready. I can’t even remember what I did, I planned on months of slow weaning and it basically happened probably in a week. No slowing down of the day nursing, although I was working so there was that slow down already there.
Sam was intensely jealous of Ant nursing when he was born, but nursing both at the same time quickly got her over that.
And we all slept in the same queen bed together for most of the first year. The adults slept with feet at the other’s head, Sam slept with daddy’s head and Ant slept with me. It was maybe a bit crowded, but it worked. Sam still mostly sleeps with daddy. She might fall asleep with me, but most of the time wakes in the night and moves to daddy.
I’m glad it happened easily with Sam. That’s what I’m hoping for too. I don’t want to night wean her, but if she’s still waking up several times a night every night, I may at least partially night wean her. It will really depend on how I’m feeling. And if it was ever too much for her, then I would stop and try and figure something else out. If you remember what you did, let me know. We’re just going to start with having her sleep sometimes with daddy and see how that goes.
I hope Meredith doesn’t get too jealous. She loves our friend’s baby so much. She wants to hold him and play with him and she gets down on his level and looks at him. It’s really sweet. She also has that cabbage patch doll your mom gave her and loves to try and nurse her and have me nurse her and potty her and such. But I wonder how different it will be when suddenly the baby is always here and even sleeping with us! I should try and remember where I put that little mei tei you made us (it was too big last year).
Sam loved Ant, it was just the nursing part. And really it was only like a week until she saw that she could still nurse if she wanted to and then she was fine. But the first time the baby had her milk was a tragedy. Also Meredith will be a few months older so that might help.
The night weaning was so easy though that I think it must have been a combination between me working and me just touching her during the night. Ant is definitely not interested in being touched to sleep, although he seems to be sleeping most days until 6 or 7 am now too so that is ok.
Meredith is actually fairly amenable to being touched to sleep sometimes. Definitely not most of the time yet, but some of the time. And the last few nights she has rolled away from me still wide awake, sometimes sat up and rearranged the blankets and/or my arms around her, laid back down, and then gone to sleep without nursing. So I’m taking that as a good sign and she’s done it all on her own so far.