What to do about daytime sleeps if you're weaning your baby from the breast?

Women have the right to know that it's not the breastfeeding which causes excessive night waking, so that they don't wean unnecessarily

Are you actually ready to wean or is your baby waking excessively at night and you've heard that night weaning will help your baby wake less often? Often when your baby's body clock is out of sync, you can feel as if you're breastfeeding all night, which is not sustainable. People might suggest that weaning is the solution. But excessive night waking isn't caused because you

• Breastfeed frequently and flexibly

• Breastfeed your baby to sleep.

If your baby is waking excessively at night, weaning is not likely to help, though a body clock reset will. If you wean in this situation, you'll have lost your best tool for making the nights as easy and as manageable as possible.

What about naps if you're weaning from the breast to the bottle during the day?

Sometimes a woman needs to wean from breastfeeding during the day when her baby is still quite young. In this case, she is likely to bottle feed her baby to sleep, instead. If you are returning to paid work, your carer is likely to use bottles of either expressed breast milk or formula, and your baby will often continue to feed off to sleep for daytime naps.

What about naps if you're weaning your baby from the breast altogether?

I have hopes that breastfeeding might become so easy and enjoyable for you, that you continue it on into toddlerhood or beyond! But I know this is just not realistic for many families. We live complex lives, in a complex world, and there are multiple reasons why women decide that it's time to wean their baby. Here, my role is simply to give you evidence-based information and to support you, as you find your own way through.

If your older baby has often gone to sleep at the breast during the day, and you've now made the decision to wean, then it's time to rely heavily on your baby sleep superpower #2, rich sensory motor nourishment, to dial your little one down into sleep during the day. We want the sleep pressure to become so high that sleep comes quickly and easily with a little cuddle and a walk or a rock. Weaning during the day is a time for as much exciting sensory adventure as you can possibly create outside the house!

Some women wean during the day gradually, by only offering the breast at designated times. They might breastfeed only at wake-up time, daytime nap time, and evening bed-time, for example. Then when it's time to wean completely, with any luck the little one may already be used to limited access to the breast. This works for some.

But for other breastfeeding women, gradually restricting access to the breast means having to cope with exhausting bouts of dialled up behaviour from their small child over a period of days and weeks, and is unworkable.

With toddlers and older children, it can be kindest and easiest for the child (and for the whole family) to set a day, then proceed from that day without daytime breastfeeds (managing your breasts so that you hand express or pump a little if they are becoming too sore and tight). You'll work out what you think is right in your own situation. If you experiment and decide you've made a mistake - that you're not ready, that you're child isn't ready - that's alright, you can change your mind and try again further down the track.

You might decide to wait until you have another loving adult around to take the little person out for as many daytime sensory adventures as possible, when you're ready to wean. This is because whenever your weaning baby sees or is in contact with you, he is likely to begin to dial up. You could expect him to feel sad and angry for a number of days, or perhaps even for a week!

You've given him a wonderful gift by breastfeeding him during the day, and now it's time for him to learn something new, which is that there is no more suckling - no more milk - from the breast.

Recommended resources

How to support a breastfeeding woman so that baby sleep isn't entirely up to her

Does it help with baby's sleep to delay or space out breastfeeding in the night?

Would night weaning help your breastfed baby sleep better?

How to do baby sleep when you're ready to wean from the breast

When is it time to stop offering the bottle in the night?

World Health Organisation: Infant and young child feeding - key facts

Selected references

Veile A, Miller V. Duration of breast feeding in ancestral environments. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_818: Springer, Cham.; 2021.