By 6-8 months your baby is fully ready and capable to be completely done with eating at night. Dr. Sears suggests that some parents really enjoy feeding their babies at night and will happily continue offering night feeding sessions until the child stops waking up on their own. If you are one of these mythical “I love waking up in the middle of the night” parents, best of luck to you. Personally I don’t know any people like this. And I think they’re really rare. Like unicorn rare.
But my point is that by this time your baby no longer needs to consume lots of food at night and is fully capable of getting all their calories in during daylight hours. And while a few babies will organically drop all their night feedings without any assistance from you, the vast majority of babies will continue to wake up routinely for a nursing session or bottle for years. So you can live with night feedings for the next 3 years, or you can take some simple and effective steps to gently wean your baby off their night feeding habit.
If you think you’re ready to stop night feedings you must have already read and done your homework from Sleeping Through the Night Part 1 and Sleeping Through the Night Part 2. Otherwise my no-fail night weaning strategy will fail miserably!
Start by choosing the feeding that is the least fun for you (typically this is the “dear God why are you awake it’s freeking 2:00 AM” feeding). Use the relevant process outlined below to completely wean off one feeding. Repeat.
Night Weaning for Breastfed Babies
- Gradually reduce the amount of time baby gets on the breast by 1 minute every 1-2 days. For example if your baby nurses 10 minutes a side (for a total of 20 minutes), start popping him off at 9 minutes, 8 minutes, etc.
- By the time your baby is only nursing for 2-3 minutes he may stop waking up all on his own. WHOOPIEE!
- If your baby STILL wants to nurse then you have a few options on how to handle it:
- A) Send daddy in for 1 minute of low-key soothing. Daddies are miraculously good at this. Also? They don’t smell like food. Babies are much more adaptive at getting the “no more food for you buddy” message from Dads.
- B) Let him complain. This should NOT be a nightmare CIO scene. Most babies who have been gently decreasing their milk consumption are now USED to not eating at this time. Left to their own devices they typically complain for 5-10 minutes and then fall back to sleep.
- When you are done feeding your baby at X time of night you are DONE. Don’t let teething/colds/travel get you back on the night feeding menu. If this happens you need to start over again. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.
Night Weaning for Bottle-fed Babies
- Preferred Method: Dilute the formula by reducing the amount of formula in the bottle by 1 scoop but leave the amount of water the same. So instead of 8 oz of water with 4 scoops of formula you would offer 8 oz of water with 3 scoops of formula.
- If your baby has an unusually refined pallet and refuses the diluted formula (this is VERY rare) you can instead offer 2 oz less of formula. So instead of an 8 oz bottle, offer a 6 oz bottle.
- Continue decreasing the dilution of the formula until the bottle is 100% water. (Or continue offering less formula in the bottle – 6 oz, 4 oz, 2 oz)
- At this point your baby will probably stop waking up for this feeding all on their own. If not read the tips above (for breastfed babies) on how to proceed.
- When you are done with a given feeding you are DONE. No more bottles at that time of night. The kitchen is closed.
I’ve done this with many families over the years and it works shockingly well. Don’t believe me? Try it. Then come back next week and share your success story in the comment section!
There are a few small caveats to night weaning that I want to share….
The Dreaded Early Morning Feeding
It’s really common for babies to wake up to nurse in the early morning, say 5:00 AM, and then fall back to sleep for another 1-2 hours. When starting the night weaning process I suggest that this is the LAST feeding session you tackle.
Why?
Because babies often respond to giving up the 5:00 AM feeding by deciding instead to start the day. I think the problem is that a) it’s close enough to their normal wakeup time b) they’re used to waking up at that time already and c) they’ve gotten enough sleep that basic exhaustion won’t just whisk them back to dreamland.
I have no magic solution to this dilemma. Try weaning off the early morning feeding and see what happens. Your baby may continue to sleep happily until their normal wakeup time. Your baby may figure out how to fall back asleep at 5:00 am with a little gentle soothing encouragement from you or your partner. Or your baby may flatly refuse to go back to sleep without being fed.
If the latter then you can decide if you want to simply concede defeat and continue with the 5:00 AM feeding rather than wake up in the early dark of the morning. Personally I think an extra hour or two of sleep is worth dealing with the 5:00 AM feeding. If you’re nursing I would strongly encourage you to give your baby a bottle instead at this hour so you and your partner can take turns.
Baby is Too Young
You are welcome to try to gently night wean when your baby is younger than 6-8 months old. Sometimes it works. More often it doesn’t. But there is no harm in trying to drop a feeding or two in the 4-6 month time frame. If things go smoothly, great! If not your baby may simply be too young and may not be physically ready to go for longer stretches without eating. Wait a few weeks and then try again.
Using CIO to Stop Night Feedings
Cry it out is a lousy way to stop night feedings. For starters, a baby who is used to eating a lot at night will cry A LOT if asked to stop eating at night all at once. I guarantee you many of those CIO horror stories you can find on baby forums were caused by misguided parents who had a baby used to drinking 24 oz of formula at night and then was cut off cold turkey. I get cranky when I skip a meal. If I didn’t eat all day I’m almost ready to eat my own young. Don’t ask your babies to do this.
Cry it out is a useful technique and it has a very specific purpose. But it’s not useful for night weaning.
So if you’ve taught your baby how to fall asleep on their own, you are ready to get started on night weaning!
Share a comment below. What worked/didn’t work for you? Any advice for handling the dreaded 5:00 AM feeding/wakeup? If so drop me a line. We’ll write a bestselling baby sleep book and become billionaires!
{photo credit: DonkeyHotey and Stephen Heron}
Janey on 
Matt on 
Meg on
Great post and very timely for us! We’ve just gotten through using CIO to get my 6 month old fall asleep during nap and for bed at night. We used lots of your tips and have had great success! It has CHANGED OUR LIVES! We now have a baby who naps and who can get to sleep on her own!!! I am SO GRATEFUL.
Problem is, she’s still waking up quite a bit throughout the night… anywhere from 3-4 times. I am feeling like we should just ride the wave and be happy with the gains we’ve already made, but I know that she needs to learn how to sleep longer. For her own sake. And, of course, for my sake.
I am anxious to try your tips, but the problem is that she’s very inconsistent about when she wakes up… sometimes 10:30, 12:30, 3 and 5… other days just 11 and 4. Any tips as to how night weaning might work for us given the inconsistency of the frequency and timing of her wake-ups?
Which is more normal (the 4-5 X a night or the 2 X a night)?
Two things you might try….
1) Can you figure out when she is REALLY hungry vs. just needing some soothing? I mean if she’s waking up every 2-3 hours she’s probably not literally starving because she JUST ate. Plus you know she can go for long stretches because sometimes she does. If you can figure out when the wake up is hunger vs. soothing you could stop feeding her as often at night through some parental detective work.
2) Otherwise….start cutting short her first feeding of the night whenever it happens to be. 10:30/11:00 seems sort of regular? So start working on the first one. Thus she get’s all the time she wants after midnight but the pre-midnight feedings are going to start getting shorter.
Does that make sense?
Alexis
Alexis recently posted..What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night Part 3
Hi there, thanks for the post! We are dealing with a 4-month-old who suddenly started waking in the night after 1.5-3 hour chunks of sleep. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to them, and the times are all over the place. Instead of his usual longer chunks, they are getting shorter and shorter. He can fall asleep on his own, although we do give him a pacifier. But we leave the room while he is still awake…I noticed you don’t mention anywhere about this mysterious thing I keep reading about called the 4 month sleep regression. Any thoughts on this? Could this be the reason little man is sleeping worse, and if so, will he get better on his own or do we need to start some sort of sleep training? Sometimes (rarely) we can get him back to sleep by simply giving him the paci again or if he cries a little rocking (still putting him back down awake once he is calm). Mostly I have to nurse him to calm him down though.
My baby did that too, almost exactly at four months. I’ve been told there’s a developmental benchmark at that time, when babies’ personalities start to kick in — there’s a bit of a break from whatever pattern they may previously have developed, and they have to acclimate.
Good to know you survived, gives me hope! Do you remember about how long until your baby was sleeping a little longer at night?
For us it got worse before it got better. By six months he was waking up every 45 minutes to 2 hours and he was pretty sleep deprived (basically, Alexis’ cri de coeur — the raison d’être of Troublesome Tots, if you will). Our baby was struggling with reflux, though, and a bunch of bad habits that we had developed that we thought were necessary to get him to sleep. In desperation, at 6.5 months, we did some hardcore sleep training (which I would never recommend to anyone except in extenuating circumstances, as it’s horrible – I think Alexis details the whole decision tree leading up to this option in her posts) and only then did we see big improvements. Now he generally stays in his crib from 7:30pm to 7:30am except for feedings around 11:30pm and 4:30 am, and we’re trying to figure out how to eliminate the 11:30pm feeding using Alexis’ weening suggestions.
He’s certainly not sleeping the entire time he’s in his crib – he wakes up a lot, moves around, whines, etc. but generally puts himself back to sleep, so we feel very fortunate.
Matt – I have many reasons to love you. The fact that you just spoke French in a comment has just been added to the list
Alexis recently posted..A Pediatrician Weighs in on Infant Reflux
Minnie,
Matt is right that it could definitely be a sleep regression – Ask Moxie has a nice article about it:
http://moxie.blogs.com/askmoxie/2006/02/qa_what_are_sle.html
But here’s the deal – if 1-2 weeks have gone by and nothing has gotten better than either a) it WASN’T a sleep regression OR b) the way you handled things have resulted in a night-waking habit.
EX. if you have a baby who goes long stretches without nursing but then you start feeding him every ~1 hour all night long you’ll end up with a baby who NOW is used to eating every ~1 hour all night long and will demand to do so.
I’m not saying you need to do CIO per se but I am saying that:
1) Try to soothe him back to sleep without the boob (you know he can’t be THAT hungry ALL night long right?). Have your partner do it – he doesn’t smell like food and thus will have more success than you will.
2) If he’ll only take the boob start working on popping him off sooner so that he isn’t consuming as many calories. We don’t want to get used to getting all his calories at night. Does that make sense?
Alexis recently posted..What to Do About Infant Reflux?
Actually he hasn’t gone long stretches since he was about 5 weeks old. And those long stretches lasted about 6 weeks before they dwindled to a halt at around 3 months old. Since then there have been a few 5 hour stretches, but not many. These days we’re lucky if we get a 3 hour stretch. I don’t always feed him, especially when he has only slept an hour or 2 before waking. Hubby will give him the paci, and sometimes he’ll go back to sleep. Other times he acts like we’re beating him, crying so hard, and that’s when I’ll break down and feed him. But last night I didn’t let him suckle long after it was clear he wasn’t eating anymore. I will keep working on that! Thank you both for the advice!
So – not a sleep regression then but a generalized “baby sleep problem.”
Have you tried the swing? Check the article below. If he has been waking up 5-6 times a night for the past 3 month (that’s what is happening yes?) then it’s time to do something different. And my first suggestion would be to put him in a swing. The angle and soothing motion often help “up all night” babies sleep longer stretches. Good luck!
Alexis recently posted..The Ultimate Baby Swing Sleep Guide For Swing Hating Babies
Also, little bubs goes around 3.5 hours between nursing sessions in the day. Pediatrician says he “should” be going 4. It just doesn’t work out to go that long with naps and the length of time he stays awake. Also, I’m worried getting that few of feedings in during the day will result in more night wakings. He’s so distractible these days I’m lucky if he nurses for 10 minutes at a time.
Hi Minnie, I’m just replying to a question about your little guy distracted during daytime feedings… I have 6 month old twins who are VERY distracted and so I’ve come to terms with having to go into the nursery for pretty much every feed, and rocking in dim light on the glider. Now, they both just concentrate on the boob and have good feeds and I’ve noticed that the nighttime feeds have decreased since doing this. I hope this helps?
Fina (see below) is totally on the mark. Also I agree with YOU – more feedings during the day is better than more at night. Personally my suggestion is let them feed at will during the DAY while gradually weaning at NIGHT.
Alexis recently posted..The Thing About Sleep Regressions
I didn’t know that I should reduce the feeding time with my baby especially with the breast feeding session because as I previously know, breast feeding is best for babies. Which is better breast feeding or bottle feeding?
Thanks for the information. I learned a lot!
-Wilma
Um…I’m not getting into the “bottle vs. breast” debate BUT…
Nobody is suggesting that you stop nursing! What I AM saying is that as your baby get’s older they don’t need to consume calories (from either source) at night and are fully capable of getting all their food during the day. So nurse to your heart’s content all day long but use the night for sleeping.
Alexis recently posted..What You Need to Know About Sleeping Through the Night Part 3