I am the one who you should talk to my friend. I have a velcro, she is 2.5 and has been exclusively breastfed, I totally totally exhaustingly know what you are going through. That is the only way my kid has ever ever slept, she would get up various times as well. Things are getting better though. I am tired and might not get all the details out so feel free to ask questions. A month or so ago I decided I was just done with this and couldn't do it anymore. Well, actually I should say first I noticed a correlation with her eating a lot of wheat (pasta, pizza, cookies etc) and on a day/night she ate a lot of wheat she had a harder time staying asleep. Having a bunch of allergies and food intolerances myself I thought she might have an issue with gluten. So it has helped to make sure she eats very little of it. That said, she still refused to nap or to sleep at night at all without nursing.

So what I did when I got sick of it, really a couple months ago now, would be to do what you are totally not supposed to do and take either almond milk or soymilk and warm up a large glass bottle and let her drink that and then I would nurse her for a tiny bit before she drifted off. Slowly I would try to just give her the bottle and instead of letting her fall asleep on the boob I would sing and rub her back and tell her to close her eyes while or after the bottle and SOMETIMES it worked and she would sleep, if not I would let her nurse. At the same time I was cutting calories to lose weight and for me that really decreased my milk big time. So she would nurse and not get much and ask for another bottle. I was always there for the comfort and what not and her crib is still in our room.

Well fast forward to doing this for the last couple months and slowly increasing. I know a bottle isn't great and even sippy cups are not at this age (she usually has a plastic cup with a straw for the day time) but I figured its at most twice a day she uses it so how bad can it be? Still I went and spent money on those lifefactory bottles and the sippy caps. When they came in the mail I told her these were for bedtime and she got sort of excited. That day I made one with warm milk and laid her on the couch with some blankets and a pillow and sat next to her while she drank, rubbed her back and sang and when she was done she asked me to lay by her so I sort of leaned by her and in like a minute she was totally out!! Tonight she asked to be by her dad to sleep (ever since the milk isn't flowing she is a total daddy's girl, I'm like, "yeah I see how it is user" lol ) I made her "special" glass sippy lifefactory bottle with warm milk and she laid next to daddy and drank it while he sang and rubbed her back and she was out! I expect some slip ups but now that I dont really have any milk she doesn't really want it and she still gets the comfort of her parents and singing and sleeping in the same room so she seems good. I will say there were a couple nights where she seemed upset in her sleep (she talks in her sleep and she asked for it in her sleep :( But the next day I would offer and she wasn't interested so maybe that is just part of the weaning process, a little grieving for her, which is sad though. Anyway, I think we are done and I'm so geeked about it! What isn't fun is the hormone rollercoaster for us of weaning because we still have all that crazy hormones in us and my period came two weeks early and was a BEAR.

So I probably rambled on about things I didn't need to and didn't say enough of what I should've so feel free to ask questions if you get through this post and need to :) I hope that was helpful mama, good luck!