baby won’t sleep

She’s so cute. She’s just adorable. SweetPea makes every day fun, easy, and a joy to watch she and her brother roll through life. We often say if she weren’t so cute, there’s no way she would have made it with night nursing a full year. No. Stinking. Way. Am I crazy for having awakened every 3-4 hours to nurse a baby? Well, obviously when babies are born and the first several months of life it’s vital for their growth and development to nurse 8-12 times in a 24 hour period. That’s science and the standard medical recommendation. Most people probably aren’t still up with their 11 7/8 month old, though. We haven’t night weaned for a number of reasons. I’ll start with those and then move on to unroll our very big plan to night wean when she hits one on April 10th–coincidentally also my birthday!  1) Why not to night wean too early. When your newborn nurses, the suction & compression tells your body: “Make MORE” and in those early days and weeks, your milk supply becomes established. In my layman’s terms as a non-educated lactationist: you create the supply & demand set up so that your milk glands are geared toward producing a certain amount of milk. It’s hard to increase that later in the game. Nurse early, nurse often. When your growing baby nurses at night it packs on the pounds. If your baby is like SweetPea and on the smaller end of the spectrum (>25%…