Dana Obleman: Hi, I’m Dana. Welcome to this week’s video. Today I want to talk about one of the most popular questions I get asked. That’s, “When can I night wean my baby?”

It’s not that simple. There’s really two sides to this situation. Let’s first talk about if you’ve worked the Sleep Sense program and have a baby who has some really good independent sleep skills at bedtime. That is always first stop, people. When you have any kind of sleep challenges, you always need to look at what’s going on at bedtime. That’s the answer to everything.

Let’s say you’ve worked the program. You’ve got a baby sleeping great at bedtime, but they’re still waking up for one feed a night. Perhaps you weren’t quite ready to pull that feed and now you are. The good news is because your baby’s got some great sleep skills at bedtime, this will transfer quite quickly to the night wake‑up as well.

Right now they’re really doing something called habitual nighttime eating. That means they’re going to happily accept a feed for as long as you’re going to offer it. When we think about it from our perspective, we’re very capable of eating whenever we choose. We don’t necessarily need to be hungry to eat.

That’s similar to what’s going on here. A baby doesn’t really need it, but it’s kind of nice. They’re going to wake up repeatedly night after night until you decide, OK, enough’s enough. If you’ve decided that enough is enough, then you’re going to go ahead and pull that feed cold turkey.

There is no easy way to wean down or minimize minutes or decrease ounces. I find that’s not really helpful at all. It ends up confusing baby and prolonging the whole process. Cold turkey is the best and fastest way to get this problem solved.

The good news is because she’s got great sleep skills at bedtime it’s only going to take her a few nights to get the hang of this, that there’s no more feeds being offered, she knows how to get back to sleep, and she starts doing it on her own and sleeping right through.

You’re only looking at roughly three or four nights of protest around maybe she’s expecting a feed. She isn’t sure what’s going on. Then, good news, she’s sleeping straight through.

The other side of the situation is that you have a baby who does not have good sleep skills, is very reliant on breastfeeding or bottle‑feeding to sleep. That makes sense that throughout the night they would wake periodically, not know how to get back to sleep without your help, and need you to come in and breastfeed or bottle‑feed.

It stops being about the food and more about the strategy for getting to sleep. I’m not saying that newborn babies don’t need night feeds. Even three‑month‑old babies might still need night feeds. You should always run these things by your doctor before you make any decisions around this. For a lot of babies who are prop dependent it is not about the food. It’s just the strategy.

I would start at bedtime. If you’ve got a baby that’s dependent on the breast or the bottle for sleep, start at bedtime and see what happens. You’ve got a 50 percent chance that your baby is going to figure out how to sleep well and do it all the way through the night. You won’t even have to pull night feeds because she does it naturally on her own. That’s pretty good odds, 50‑50.

If you get a few weeks into the program, you find she’s not really giving up that night feed on her own and you feel confident enough in letting that go, then cold turkey is the best approach. Get rid of that nighttime feed. Within a few nights you’ll have a baby that’s sleeping all the way through the night. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Thanks for watching. Sleep well.