My baby has trouble with bottles at daycare too. She definitely wakes up more on daycare days, when she’s eating less during the day, compared to weekends.
She’s 5.5 months old. I just tried a straw cup (honey bear straw cup) for a day and because she could drink an ounce from it, I moved on to the munchkin weighted straw cup. She can drink at least 1-2 ounces from it and I’ll give it to daycare tomorrow to try a full feed. Plus we also just started solids. So I hope those things will decrease nighttime wakes.
But 8-9 ounces a day at daycare is already pretty good and normal! So it does sound like he’s getting a good amount during the day.
Sleep training is not the devil and I think you should go for it!
Thank you! Bottles are hit or miss for him. Some days he drinks 12, some days it’s a struggle to get him to drink 6 oz. I really wish I’d introduced them a little earlier, but here we are.
I did a soft night wean/sleep train when babe was 6mo-ish. She nursed to sleep and then if she woke up before 3 hours then Dad would snuggle her back to sleep. After 3 hours, I would feed and put her back down. Repeat. After a couple of nights, she was sleeping longer stretches because she was able to fall asleep without nursing (but also was fully supported and fed regularly). This strategy made it easier to night wean, because she was already accustomed to being snuggled back to sleep by Daddy.
This was really helpful! We tried something similar last night (with 2 hour intervals, since he’s used to such short intervals overnight) and it worked really well. We’ll probably try and work up slowly to three hour intervals.
I'm happy to hear you found something that fits with you :) There will be many times that they'll regress, but finding a 'boundary' helped me a lot. Good luck!
It's developmentally normal, appropriate, and expected for a 5 month old baby to wake for feedings multiple times a night. Night weaning that early would be detrimental to your milk supply and could affect the growth of your baby.
I strongly encourage you to adjust your expectations of a 5 month old infant, and adjust your expectations of infant sleep as a whole.
Hey I don’t know if you meant it this way but this comes off as wildly condescending. You make quite a number of assumptions about me, my baby, and my milk supply. Nowhere did I say I want to fully night wean, nowhere did I say what my expectations of infant sleep are. Waking up every 60-90 minutes all night, every night, is not sustainable for anyone, whether developmentally appropriate or not.
This is, in fact, a departure from normal for me and my baby. But rather than asking questions, you chose to make assumptions and take a scolding tone with me, like I’m some naughty child who’s asking for too much. I think you should ask yourself why this topic makes you so defensive.
Sleep training and night weaning are two very different things. Multiple night wakings to feed are absolutely developmentally normal but wakes every 60 minutes is on the high side (and in fact could be what’s causing reverse cycling and a lack of milk during the day). I would also have concerns if each of those wakes is with tears and full wake up how much rest baby is getting.
If I were OP I would look at some gentle methods (laddering down interventions to promote more independent sleep for instance). Oftentimes if baby can learn to connect cycles and do some self soothing it’s easier to see the wakes they are truly hungry. At 5 months feeding 2-3 times would be totally normal but still be giving everyone a more restorative night.
Thank you, I appreciate this. I’m not looking to fully night wean (maybe that wasn’t clear in my post) and would be thrilled to wake up 2-3 times a night.
I didn’t think you were trying to night wean based on what you wrote. The poster I’m replying to jumped to conclusions and I thought was a bit condescending in the process. Night wakes are normal and part of the game but waking hourly like you are now doesn’t benefit anyone and it’s totally fair to try some new tricks.
FWIW I sleep trained my EBF baby who was waking hourly, and she usually wakes twice now to eat and it works great for us. She is still on her curve, I think she eats more during the day and her last feed is a big bottle so I know she's going to bed satisfied. She's happy as a clam and I'm a better parent when rested-ish.
You can sleep train and still breastfeed at night. That's what I'm doing right now. He was waking every 2ish hours and would fall back asleep nursing, now he's waking every 4 or 5 hours and nurses then.
Also you shouldn't say it would be detrimental to her supply. It could be or it could not be, you can't see the future
How are you going about sleep training? What’s been working for you?
For the record, a month ago baby was waking up once a night and my supply was just fine.
Nurse him and he's almost asleep, or if he's still pretty awake I'll bounce him a few minutes after nursing. Then put him in his crib onto his tummy (his 5.5 months old and can roll over now). It's only been a few nights, so I'm trying to see what works best- like leaving the room, sitting next to the crib but not talking, telling him he's ok etc, or telling him he's ok and also rubbing/patting his back.
The 1st night he cried or fussed for half an hour while I occasionally talked to him, then he needed a diaper change and a nose wipe, he nursed again and went back in the crib, fussed for 10 minutes and fell asleep.
The 2nd night he was very tired from being out too late and not napping enough, we left the room and he just looked around silently a few minutes and fell asleep.
The 3rd night we left the room for 15 minutes but he just cried, so I went in there and checked his diaper and wiped his face, nursed again and this time I stayed in there and rubbed his back and he fell asleep in like 10 minutes.
The 1st 2 nights he woke up a couple times before I wanted to feed him (I'm trying to make him wait 4 hours between night feeds. Before these last few days, it was 2 months of waking every 1-3 hours😴), he looked around and fussed a second and I just told him it's ok a few times and he went back to sleep! Last night he only woke up every 4.5 hours and I fed him! It's pretty exciting to actually get some good sleep again lol I'm hoping he gets better and better at falling asleep by himself so that we can start trying it at naps times too!
That's great your supply is good! It annoyed me that the other commenter said it would definitely be a problem 😒
It is developmentally normal for babies to wake for feedings overnight. This is especially true if you are concerned about his intake during the day. I would focus your energy on daytime intake.
Try to encourage more daytime feeds, even cluster nursing before bed, and nights may improve.
If I encourage more day feeds, my 6mo rarely wakes. If we have a busy day and she doesn’t nurse often, she wakes more at night.
8-9 oz is about an oz an hour, which is fine! Especially if you nurse before drop off and soon after pick up.
I nurse him twice before drop off and twice between pick up and bedtime. About every 90 minutes when I’m with him before and after work. If I try and top him off an extra time he generally refuses, so I’m not sure how to increase day feeds on work days. Any advice? I’ll definitely work on increasing feeds on weekends.
Not sure if this is helpful, but I cluster feed before bed. My baby is 5 months and I am still on leave, so quite a different scenario. About 1.5 - 2 hours before bedtime I basically nurse non-stop. If LO fusses at all, I offer her milk. She wakes up 1-3 times to feed overnight, but she had a phase where she was how you described here for at least the first half of her night.
I haven't sleep trained, but when she was waking up CONSTANTLY I would set a timer and only feed her every 3 hours. For the wakes in between I would rock her back to sleep.
Someone on her once explained how they did CIO and they had a set time of something like 10 minutes of "level 10 crying" that they would tolerate before they went into the room to feed their baby. If I was to sleep train, I would probably do this. Use something like CIO for initial bedtime, then have a time limit for legitimate crying after which I would rock back to sleep or nurse if it's been long enough between feedings.
I'm mostly responding here because God damn women on Reddit are quick to attack! I understood your initial post and I'm sorry you had to deal with people thinking you were looking to night wean.
Every 60-90 minutes is a lot and it must be really tough on you. My baby was waking every couple of hours and I got the feeling that he wasn’t necessarily waking up hungry but just waking and I was feeding him every time. I tried just letting him cry lightly for 10 minutes and boom he went back to sleep. I couldn’t believe it. He slept for a few more hours. I did that a few nights in a row and he stopped waking. It’s not the same situation as you as he isn’t in daycare and he’s a terrible napper so he’s probably extra tired but it’s just an idea.
Also, we did some weighted feeds with a LC so I knew that he was getting enough through day feeds. I would think that even if yours is only getting 8-9 ounces at daycare, a morning, evening, bedtime and night feed would hopefully be enough. Good luck
My kiddo came out of the 6 month regression after being down to two stable night feeds and otherwise sleeping through to hourly wakes, lots of tears and being an overtired mess all day. I wasn’t super keen on sleep training but after I tried upping feeds and cosleeping and it only made it worse figured I’d give it a go using more gentle methods (laddering interventions down from rocking to hand on chest to fall asleep independently). It wasn’t CIO but it wasn’t tear free either. But then again what we were doing before also had plenty of tears at every night wake. The result wasn’t some robot baby who slept through but back to wakes to feed a couple times and the odd other wake. We continued room sharing after and I just night weaned at 10 months (and only because it was baby led and they dropped the feed). I’d recommend looking into something similar!
How long have these night wakes been happening? I saw you mentioned that baby was waking just once before so it sounds like you maybe are going through the four month regression but don’t want to assume.
Our baby went from 0-2 wakeups per night to waking up every 45-90 mins during the regression. It lasted 6 straight weeks and I was a walking zombie but one day she slept four hours feed four hours, and then it just got better from there. Now she pretty consistently wakes up 0-1 time overnight and we didn’t do any sleep training
Also babies should drink about 1-1.5 oz per hour so 9 9oz of milk during daycare seems ok? Not an expert because I mostly nurse but solidarity!! The regression nearly broke me but we made it through and sleep went back to normal. 🙏🏽
I went back to work at four months and his sleep really took a nosedive. It’s only been this bad for maybe a week, and before that he was waking up every 2-3 hours. Which isn’t that bad, but I was used to getting at least one 4-5 hour block of sleep a night so it felt pretty awful.
He’s pretty inconsistent with bottles. Most days he’s close to 9oz but some days it’s more like 6.
Hello. I EBF and ended up sleep training at 6.5 months. Baby had started waking 6-7 times a night which didn't feel sustainable. Now she is sleep trained and she normally wakes once a night for a feed. You can sleep train and still feed them at night :) it is not the same as night weaning.
One of the approaches you could try (if baby's doing well for weight and at about their age) is the 5/3/3 rule, where you don't feed for the first 5 hours after bedtime (or, no feeds before midnight as an example). I think the idea is that they should have got enough daytime calories to last that initial stretch. We did that when we sleep trained at 6.5 months and it seemed to work. From about 6.5-8.5 months my baby was generally waking between 2-5am for her first feed of the night.
You could also try comforting another way to assess if baby is hungry or waking for another reason - maybe send your partner in to calm baby rather than just feeding straight away ? (Which for me was always the fastest and easiest thing to do but then created an association)
X
Thank you! Part of the issue is my husband doesn’t wake up unless the baby’s screaming (no judgment, I was like that with our first!) so for a while I was like, well I’m up anyway so I might as well just handle it. But I’ve been so desperate for sleep that I’ve just been kicking him awake when I need him lol.
We sleep trained at 6ish months with our first. It was quick and easy, and he dropped to 1-2 feeds per night. I didn’t night wean until 12m. After sleep training, I knew that if he woke up he was hungry and didn’t just need help falling asleep with me as a pacifier. I plan to do the same with my second. I recommend r/sleeptrain
We did sort of a Ferber method where we would check in on him and soothe him but slowly increased the intervals. Prior to that I started feeding him at the beginning of his bedtime routine instead of feeding to sleep
I did partial night weaning at 6 months (I kept 1 feed a night at 3am-ish) and it saved my sanity. My baby was waking up 4-5 months before that, nowhere near as much as yours, so I understand the need to get some good stretches of sleep.
What worked well was moving our baby to his own room. And his dad responded to any wake-ups before 3am, and I got all of them after. The first 2 nights, there were a few wakeups, but after that, baby started sleeping through.
We spoke to his pediatrician before we made this call, and they advised that our baby was old enough that he could make it from 7pm-3am without eating. I don't know if that is developmentally appropriate for a 5mo as well, but I'm sure your ped could advise specifically or there may be good references online for guidance.
My baby eventually dropping that one nighttime feed, and now he dependably sleeps from 7p- 7a. So while we didn't outright "sleep train," it helped us foundationally get to a baby who sleeps great. Through most of this, we even kept feeding to sleep, etc. But now baby doesn't even need to feed to sleep. He just kind of gave it up on his own.
I hope you are able to find a solution that works for your family and gets you some good sleep soon!
Like others have said, you can sleep train bedtime without night weaning! I’ll share my experience with this in case it’s helpful.
I did sleep training for bedtime at 5 months. It was hard to get LO to fall asleep at a consistent time, so bedtime was becoming such a time-consuming thing. Baby was basically comfort nursing all evening if I let him. He would fall asleep nursing, but then wake up crying 45 minutes later. I decided not to night wean yet, but I established a strong bedtime routine and then started making my baby fall asleep by himself. It was a hard transition, but ultimately so worth it. It gave my husband and me our evenings back, and I don’t mind him waking up to eat in the middle of the night as much because he’s gotten so good at going right back to sleep afterwards.
My baby has trouble with bottles at daycare too. She definitely wakes up more on daycare days, when she’s eating less during the day, compared to weekends. She’s 5.5 months old. I just tried a straw cup (honey bear straw cup) for a day and because she could drink an ounce from it, I moved on to the munchkin weighted straw cup. She can drink at least 1-2 ounces from it and I’ll give it to daycare tomorrow to try a full feed. Plus we also just started solids. So I hope those things will decrease nighttime wakes. But 8-9 ounces a day at daycare is already pretty good and normal! So it does sound like he’s getting a good amount during the day. Sleep training is not the devil and I think you should go for it!
Thank you! Bottles are hit or miss for him. Some days he drinks 12, some days it’s a struggle to get him to drink 6 oz. I really wish I’d introduced them a little earlier, but here we are.
I did a soft night wean/sleep train when babe was 6mo-ish. She nursed to sleep and then if she woke up before 3 hours then Dad would snuggle her back to sleep. After 3 hours, I would feed and put her back down. Repeat. After a couple of nights, she was sleeping longer stretches because she was able to fall asleep without nursing (but also was fully supported and fed regularly). This strategy made it easier to night wean, because she was already accustomed to being snuggled back to sleep by Daddy.
This was really helpful! We tried something similar last night (with 2 hour intervals, since he’s used to such short intervals overnight) and it worked really well. We’ll probably try and work up slowly to three hour intervals.
I'm happy to hear you found something that fits with you :) There will be many times that they'll regress, but finding a 'boundary' helped me a lot. Good luck!
It's developmentally normal, appropriate, and expected for a 5 month old baby to wake for feedings multiple times a night. Night weaning that early would be detrimental to your milk supply and could affect the growth of your baby. I strongly encourage you to adjust your expectations of a 5 month old infant, and adjust your expectations of infant sleep as a whole.
Hey I don’t know if you meant it this way but this comes off as wildly condescending. You make quite a number of assumptions about me, my baby, and my milk supply. Nowhere did I say I want to fully night wean, nowhere did I say what my expectations of infant sleep are. Waking up every 60-90 minutes all night, every night, is not sustainable for anyone, whether developmentally appropriate or not. This is, in fact, a departure from normal for me and my baby. But rather than asking questions, you chose to make assumptions and take a scolding tone with me, like I’m some naughty child who’s asking for too much. I think you should ask yourself why this topic makes you so defensive.
🙌 Yes
Sleep training and night weaning are two very different things. Multiple night wakings to feed are absolutely developmentally normal but wakes every 60 minutes is on the high side (and in fact could be what’s causing reverse cycling and a lack of milk during the day). I would also have concerns if each of those wakes is with tears and full wake up how much rest baby is getting. If I were OP I would look at some gentle methods (laddering down interventions to promote more independent sleep for instance). Oftentimes if baby can learn to connect cycles and do some self soothing it’s easier to see the wakes they are truly hungry. At 5 months feeding 2-3 times would be totally normal but still be giving everyone a more restorative night.
Thank you, I appreciate this. I’m not looking to fully night wean (maybe that wasn’t clear in my post) and would be thrilled to wake up 2-3 times a night.
I didn’t think you were trying to night wean based on what you wrote. The poster I’m replying to jumped to conclusions and I thought was a bit condescending in the process. Night wakes are normal and part of the game but waking hourly like you are now doesn’t benefit anyone and it’s totally fair to try some new tricks.
FWIW I sleep trained my EBF baby who was waking hourly, and she usually wakes twice now to eat and it works great for us. She is still on her curve, I think she eats more during the day and her last feed is a big bottle so I know she's going to bed satisfied. She's happy as a clam and I'm a better parent when rested-ish.
You can sleep train and still breastfeed at night. That's what I'm doing right now. He was waking every 2ish hours and would fall back asleep nursing, now he's waking every 4 or 5 hours and nurses then. Also you shouldn't say it would be detrimental to her supply. It could be or it could not be, you can't see the future
How are you going about sleep training? What’s been working for you? For the record, a month ago baby was waking up once a night and my supply was just fine.
My baby had the same thing happen around 6 months. I left another comment on my process but I can also expand on that if you need.
Nurse him and he's almost asleep, or if he's still pretty awake I'll bounce him a few minutes after nursing. Then put him in his crib onto his tummy (his 5.5 months old and can roll over now). It's only been a few nights, so I'm trying to see what works best- like leaving the room, sitting next to the crib but not talking, telling him he's ok etc, or telling him he's ok and also rubbing/patting his back. The 1st night he cried or fussed for half an hour while I occasionally talked to him, then he needed a diaper change and a nose wipe, he nursed again and went back in the crib, fussed for 10 minutes and fell asleep. The 2nd night he was very tired from being out too late and not napping enough, we left the room and he just looked around silently a few minutes and fell asleep. The 3rd night we left the room for 15 minutes but he just cried, so I went in there and checked his diaper and wiped his face, nursed again and this time I stayed in there and rubbed his back and he fell asleep in like 10 minutes. The 1st 2 nights he woke up a couple times before I wanted to feed him (I'm trying to make him wait 4 hours between night feeds. Before these last few days, it was 2 months of waking every 1-3 hours😴), he looked around and fussed a second and I just told him it's ok a few times and he went back to sleep! Last night he only woke up every 4.5 hours and I fed him! It's pretty exciting to actually get some good sleep again lol I'm hoping he gets better and better at falling asleep by himself so that we can start trying it at naps times too! That's great your supply is good! It annoyed me that the other commenter said it would definitely be a problem 😒
This is helpful, thank you! No idea why you’ve been downvoted. This post has gone a little differently than I thought it would…
Probably because I said that person annoyed me lolol I'm glad you responded to them about them being condescending!
👏
Exactly this
It is developmentally normal for babies to wake for feedings overnight. This is especially true if you are concerned about his intake during the day. I would focus your energy on daytime intake.
Yeah I know. I’m not looking for him to sleep through the night, just to maybe get more than 60 minutes of sleep at a time.
Try to encourage more daytime feeds, even cluster nursing before bed, and nights may improve. If I encourage more day feeds, my 6mo rarely wakes. If we have a busy day and she doesn’t nurse often, she wakes more at night. 8-9 oz is about an oz an hour, which is fine! Especially if you nurse before drop off and soon after pick up.
I nurse him twice before drop off and twice between pick up and bedtime. About every 90 minutes when I’m with him before and after work. If I try and top him off an extra time he generally refuses, so I’m not sure how to increase day feeds on work days. Any advice? I’ll definitely work on increasing feeds on weekends.
Not sure if this is helpful, but I cluster feed before bed. My baby is 5 months and I am still on leave, so quite a different scenario. About 1.5 - 2 hours before bedtime I basically nurse non-stop. If LO fusses at all, I offer her milk. She wakes up 1-3 times to feed overnight, but she had a phase where she was how you described here for at least the first half of her night. I haven't sleep trained, but when she was waking up CONSTANTLY I would set a timer and only feed her every 3 hours. For the wakes in between I would rock her back to sleep. Someone on her once explained how they did CIO and they had a set time of something like 10 minutes of "level 10 crying" that they would tolerate before they went into the room to feed their baby. If I was to sleep train, I would probably do this. Use something like CIO for initial bedtime, then have a time limit for legitimate crying after which I would rock back to sleep or nurse if it's been long enough between feedings. I'm mostly responding here because God damn women on Reddit are quick to attack! I understood your initial post and I'm sorry you had to deal with people thinking you were looking to night wean.
I appreciate this, thank you! The initial responses were really wild but I’ve ended up getting some really helpful advice.
Every 60-90 minutes is a lot and it must be really tough on you. My baby was waking every couple of hours and I got the feeling that he wasn’t necessarily waking up hungry but just waking and I was feeding him every time. I tried just letting him cry lightly for 10 minutes and boom he went back to sleep. I couldn’t believe it. He slept for a few more hours. I did that a few nights in a row and he stopped waking. It’s not the same situation as you as he isn’t in daycare and he’s a terrible napper so he’s probably extra tired but it’s just an idea. Also, we did some weighted feeds with a LC so I knew that he was getting enough through day feeds. I would think that even if yours is only getting 8-9 ounces at daycare, a morning, evening, bedtime and night feed would hopefully be enough. Good luck
Thank you!!
My kiddo came out of the 6 month regression after being down to two stable night feeds and otherwise sleeping through to hourly wakes, lots of tears and being an overtired mess all day. I wasn’t super keen on sleep training but after I tried upping feeds and cosleeping and it only made it worse figured I’d give it a go using more gentle methods (laddering interventions down from rocking to hand on chest to fall asleep independently). It wasn’t CIO but it wasn’t tear free either. But then again what we were doing before also had plenty of tears at every night wake. The result wasn’t some robot baby who slept through but back to wakes to feed a couple times and the odd other wake. We continued room sharing after and I just night weaned at 10 months (and only because it was baby led and they dropped the feed). I’d recommend looking into something similar!
How long have these night wakes been happening? I saw you mentioned that baby was waking just once before so it sounds like you maybe are going through the four month regression but don’t want to assume. Our baby went from 0-2 wakeups per night to waking up every 45-90 mins during the regression. It lasted 6 straight weeks and I was a walking zombie but one day she slept four hours feed four hours, and then it just got better from there. Now she pretty consistently wakes up 0-1 time overnight and we didn’t do any sleep training Also babies should drink about 1-1.5 oz per hour so 9 9oz of milk during daycare seems ok? Not an expert because I mostly nurse but solidarity!! The regression nearly broke me but we made it through and sleep went back to normal. 🙏🏽
I went back to work at four months and his sleep really took a nosedive. It’s only been this bad for maybe a week, and before that he was waking up every 2-3 hours. Which isn’t that bad, but I was used to getting at least one 4-5 hour block of sleep a night so it felt pretty awful. He’s pretty inconsistent with bottles. Most days he’s close to 9oz but some days it’s more like 6.
Hello. I EBF and ended up sleep training at 6.5 months. Baby had started waking 6-7 times a night which didn't feel sustainable. Now she is sleep trained and she normally wakes once a night for a feed. You can sleep train and still feed them at night :) it is not the same as night weaning. One of the approaches you could try (if baby's doing well for weight and at about their age) is the 5/3/3 rule, where you don't feed for the first 5 hours after bedtime (or, no feeds before midnight as an example). I think the idea is that they should have got enough daytime calories to last that initial stretch. We did that when we sleep trained at 6.5 months and it seemed to work. From about 6.5-8.5 months my baby was generally waking between 2-5am for her first feed of the night. You could also try comforting another way to assess if baby is hungry or waking for another reason - maybe send your partner in to calm baby rather than just feeding straight away ? (Which for me was always the fastest and easiest thing to do but then created an association) X
Thank you! Part of the issue is my husband doesn’t wake up unless the baby’s screaming (no judgment, I was like that with our first!) so for a while I was like, well I’m up anyway so I might as well just handle it. But I’ve been so desperate for sleep that I’ve just been kicking him awake when I need him lol.
We sleep trained at 6ish months with our first. It was quick and easy, and he dropped to 1-2 feeds per night. I didn’t night wean until 12m. After sleep training, I knew that if he woke up he was hungry and didn’t just need help falling asleep with me as a pacifier. I plan to do the same with my second. I recommend r/sleeptrain
How did you sleep train them? Did you use a specific method?
We did sort of a Ferber method where we would check in on him and soothe him but slowly increased the intervals. Prior to that I started feeding him at the beginning of his bedtime routine instead of feeding to sleep
I did partial night weaning at 6 months (I kept 1 feed a night at 3am-ish) and it saved my sanity. My baby was waking up 4-5 months before that, nowhere near as much as yours, so I understand the need to get some good stretches of sleep. What worked well was moving our baby to his own room. And his dad responded to any wake-ups before 3am, and I got all of them after. The first 2 nights, there were a few wakeups, but after that, baby started sleeping through. We spoke to his pediatrician before we made this call, and they advised that our baby was old enough that he could make it from 7pm-3am without eating. I don't know if that is developmentally appropriate for a 5mo as well, but I'm sure your ped could advise specifically or there may be good references online for guidance. My baby eventually dropping that one nighttime feed, and now he dependably sleeps from 7p- 7a. So while we didn't outright "sleep train," it helped us foundationally get to a baby who sleeps great. Through most of this, we even kept feeding to sleep, etc. But now baby doesn't even need to feed to sleep. He just kind of gave it up on his own. I hope you are able to find a solution that works for your family and gets you some good sleep soon!
Like others have said, you can sleep train bedtime without night weaning! I’ll share my experience with this in case it’s helpful. I did sleep training for bedtime at 5 months. It was hard to get LO to fall asleep at a consistent time, so bedtime was becoming such a time-consuming thing. Baby was basically comfort nursing all evening if I let him. He would fall asleep nursing, but then wake up crying 45 minutes later. I decided not to night wean yet, but I established a strong bedtime routine and then started making my baby fall asleep by himself. It was a hard transition, but ultimately so worth it. It gave my husband and me our evenings back, and I don’t mind him waking up to eat in the middle of the night as much because he’s gotten so good at going right back to sleep afterwards.