Dylan Thomas

At 18 months, James is still a devoted breastfeeder, and has been generally polite enough about it that I haven't had a problem continuing. But then last night he spent literally all night nursing. Not just that he nursed a lot, but that he wouldn't sleep without being latched on the entire time. Suddenly nightweaning, which I've been contemplating for a while now, seems a lot more attractive. I'm pretty sure that he was sick last night, possibly a sore throat or he's been grabbing ears today. But I'm pretty sure that at 18 months, he can make it through the night without a couple snacks and as lovely as it is to cuddle a nice warm baby, I'm willing to endure missing him if it means he'll sleep all night.

The only question is as to when. There's no point right now, since he's in the middle of the 18 month developmental spurt and he's going to sleep like crap no matter what we do. But by the he's over that, it's going to be close to the holidays and travelling, which may well screw up anything we accomplish. There's also the small detail of finding at least a couple days where we can afford to go without sleep. The main reason we haven't attempted nightweaning before now is because James sleeps just well enough that continuing to be a bit tired seems more attractive than a few days of utter exhaustion. And while he will accept cuddling from to go back to sleep for a while, at some point in the evening he decides it's nursing or nothing, and if we try to delay that too long, even if I do breastfeed him, he'll have woken up enough that he's going to be awake for the next two hours. This is... unattractive at 1 AM. I've tried putting him back in his crib on a few of these occasions and he would eventually go back to sleep after much crying, only to wake up after half an hour. At which point I would just pull him into bed because it was usually 4 AM at that point and his never-say-die attitude was just stronger than mine.

Which is all to say that I am quite confident night weaning is going to be a painful, sleepless process and I have no idea how we're going to find a couple days when we can afford not to have any sleep.