What to do when it's time for another loving adult to take over caring for your breastfed toddler in the night?

Are you the parent whose been doing most of the night work but you're ready to share the load now as you respond to your own and your family's complex needs?

Have you been breastfeeding, but now it's time for your toddler's other parent, or another loving adult, to take over care of your toddler in the night?

If you're ready to wean from the breast, it makes sense not to offer any more milk at all during the night. Instead, you'll be teaching your little one that love comes without milk, in the arms of her father or other loving carer. Otherwise you'll face further disruptions down the track when you do decide to wean your little one off any kind of night milk, whether from the bottle or a beaker. However, there's also no reason why you can't take a stepped approach, if you prefer. You'll experiment and work out what's right for your unique family.

If you're a breastfeeding woman but you're not there some nights (for example, because of night shifts in paid work), your little one's father or other loving carer might decide he'd like to use milk for a time anyway, to help her get used to the change. Women often still breastfeed the nights that they are home, even if they're increasingly away for long periods. Your toddler knows that breastfeeding comes with you, and quickly learns that breastfeeding isn't available when you're not available. She'll adapt quickly, though there might be some very upset nights with her father at first.

Many parents set up trial runs.

• You might start out by regularly disappearing during the day on weekends, if you're the primary carer and your partner is home on weekends, so that he and your older baby or toddler learn that sleep can happen easily when they're together during the day, without you.

• Then you might practice leaving your little one and her father or other loving carer alone together in the evenings, coming in late after your toddler's gone to sleep. You can find out more here.

• You can trust that your toddler and her dad will work it out together in the night, because of his love for her, even if he's feeling a bit stressed about it at the start. It's a wonderful opportunity for them to develop their own, unique father-daughter (father-son, parent-toddler) relationship.

When you're the parent taking over in the evening

If you're the little one's father or non-breastfeeding carer, use your sensory motor stimulation skills (which I imagine are already finely honed!) to keep him as dialled down as possible in the evening. You can find out about this here. Of course, you may face constraints if you are also caring for an older child or children.

Evenings can come unstuck for fathers doing it on their own in the evening when they feel as though it's their job to put their little one down in bed at a certain time. Trying to put your toddler to bed at a certain time in the evening is a recipe for lots of dialling up. Your child is likely to remember when she's put down into a bed that she likes to breastfeed to sleep, and begin crying (or screaming) for her mother!

Instead, things go best if you continue to offer rich and changing sensory motor nourishment, letting the sleep pressure build as you keep her as dialled down as possible, until sleep looks after itself in your arms. Then once she's deeply asleep, you could try lying her down on a mattress.

When you're the parent taking over in the night

If you are taking over in the night and your toddler wakes up crying and screaming, then your job is again to cuddle, rock, walk, sing, and soothe verbally as best you can, whatever your own unique style of offering comfort is. You know that she is learning something new, which is that love also comes without milk in the night. It will be tough for her for a little while, though possibly not for as long as you think. She'll quickly adapt. She'll soon learn that love is there for her in the night, even if your love, as the dad or non-breastfeeding parent, comes without milk.

This can happen much quicker if she knows that her mother is not in the house. Hiding the breastfeeding woman away in a room in the house often doesn't work because our bright little toddlers know that she's there somewhere, and scream and cry for her until she comes.