I had my first litter of cavaliers 5 weeks ago. Despite needing an emergency ceasarian mum did brilliantly for first two weeks.  Although having plenty of milk and not being sore, at 14days old she stopped feeding them through the night and before long refused to nurse them, only giving them a short suckle on the odd rare occasion.  I obviously had to take over and am trying to fully wean then.  They are still desperate to feed from her any time they see or smell her, and cry pitifully when she shakes them off.  The worse time is at night when she keeps putting her head into the box and disturbing them.  I am thinking of keeping her away from them at night to see if they will sleep longer undisturbed.  I am averaging about 3/4 hours disturbed sleep per night and it is getting to me now.  Is it always like this or am I just unlucky. I was told by my breeder that if they are crying they are still hungry when fed they settle contentedly, but not in my house they dont!  Please help.  Margaret

Have you clipped their nails, check underneath and see if mum is sore.

Have you made sure their nails are nice and short? They grow very quickly into quite fearsome weapons, and is the most common reason for bitches to stop nursing.

so they are 5 weeks old now ???? and you are weaning them ? well one of my cavaliers last year gave up feeding around 2 weeks as well and decided that she wasn't there mum anymore , my pups tried to get the odd suckle but mum was playing very hard to get so I just weaned them fully and took her out at night and put her in a babygrow all day so the pups couldn't get to her ....it worked out fine here and at 5 weeks if pups are getting good diet during the day should be settled at night , not ideal I know as my other bitch would go mad being seperated at night from hers but if she dosen't want to know then not much you can do but take over .......... I think this time you have been unlucky as cavaliers are normally great mums

join the forum you can then let me know her progress

How far have you got with your weaning? How much "solid" food are they having?
I looked after a litter of afghans between 3 and 5 weeksof age , their mum really lost interest in them at 3 weeks and had to be forced to go in with them sometimes. We weaned them very easily and quickly, but found that we had to progress the solids very quickly....if they didnt have enough solids they didnt settle. They were constantly hungry to keep up with their rapid growth.
at 3 weeks they were on baby rice with lactol, getting it mixed thicker by the day. 6 solid meals a day, initially off a spoon. In addition they were offered lactol milk or water to drink. Last meal was 10 pm. First meal was 6 am. Pretty soon the lactol and rice didnt satisfy them and at 4 weeks they were on mushy meat meals as well as the rice meals, again not forgetting drinks.
If your pups are getting a good balance of liquids and solids, it may just be that they want to comfort suckle...as ours did. We used well wrapped hot water bottles and fluffy toys as a "mum" substitute to good effect. :)