Hi L.,
I'm going through a similar thing right now. Daughter will be 14 months next week. This past week I started eliminating the 2:30-3am feed. I'm just doing one session at a time and it's going quite well. What I realized in fact is that whenever she'd cry out in the night I'd just automatically give her the breast and fall right back to sleep. What I'm seeing now is that she didn't necessarily want to eat, she just wanted to get back to sleep. So I started by telling her what we were doing, or in this case, not doing--feeding in the middle of the night.
when she woke up the first night and cried out I kept my hand on her (if she wanted it there), hummed a bit and she fell asleep after about 4 minutes of tears. the next night she sat up in bed, cried for a few minutes again and I laid her back down, she went right to sleep. Mind you she was not even rooting for the breast. I was shocked! Not one night has she rooted for the breast. The third night she was off the bed when I woke to her cry (a first--our bed's on the floor). and I scooped her back into bed and she was out immediately. the 4th night we were up for nearly two hours with some crying interspersed with dozing, but not fullout horrible crying, more just complaining and her trying to get herself back to sleep. no rooting then either and after so long i was considering giving in but am so glad I held out. Last night I barely remember what happened, a cry out, my reaching to her and both of us back to sleep.
I still nurse her back to sleep around 5 or 6"30am or whenever she first wakes up. next I plan to eliminate one of the two wake ups that happen before I actually climb into bed with her. Right now if she's down at 8 she wakes 1/2 hr. later, nurses more, sleeps another 45minutes or so and then wakes again when I get into bed.
But I can't tell you what a big difference eliminating that mid of the night session has made. And I thought it was going to be so much harder than it was. key is to tell her each night what's going to happen. i.e we're not going to nurse in the night, we're going to sleep right through and if we wake up we'll snuggle and go right back to sleep...or whatever.
hope this helps.
R.