Any co-sleeping breastfeeders had success with the 'Pantley pull-off'?

[Aimeelou28]

Hey, my 8 month old dd has been co-sleeping since birth after she downright refused to do anything else! I came quickly to love cos-sleeping but now its no longer working and I have a very unsettled baby on my hands. :(

During the day she naps in her pushchair or in the car, and she naps fairly well in those places. At night she feeds to sleep on a mattress on the floor of her bedroom, where I sleep with her most of the time. She goes to sleep at a decent time, between 6 and 7pm usually and has a good bedtime routine. However, she doesn't know how to self settle and she's now waking up on average EVERY HOUR, sometimes more, during the night and having to be fed back to sleep. This has been going on for a while now. It doesn't seem to make a difference whether I'm cuddled up with her or left her there on her own while I'm downstairs, she's still waking up the same amount and won't settle with a rub or a cuddle, it has to be a boob! Sometimes she'll feed on one boob then cry out again until I give her the other, the switching from boob to boob can go on for a while until she eventually goes off and I get absolutely exhausted! I'm struggling, as the co-sleeping used to be the answer to my prayers as I got a fair amount of sleep- and now I don't! I've read the No Cry sleep solution and figured I need to gradually make her less dependent on feeds so she she can put herself back to sleep; has anyone managed to do this using the Pantley Pull off? I've tried a couple of times when she first goes to bed but not found the willpower to bother in the middle of the night. I think if I knew it has worked for people and how they did it maybe would give me the energy to have a proper go at it!!!

[bittenipples]

Hiya I'm still co sleeping with my 12mo. He went through a phase of being really unsettled and needing to feed to sleep all night long, but is a lot better now. Firstly when he teethes he is much worse at kicking and moving at night, secondly he now wakes up and instead of needing my boob to fall asleep just a shuffle and a pat on the back will do it. He still needs feeding to sleep at bedtime though.

[bittenipples]

actually scrap that last post, i was a human dummy last night!

grrrrr.

[SquidgersMummy]

At 8mths I was happy to let her help herself - at 1 we tried the tech of letting her have a few sucks then stopping - this drove her mad.
So we gave water in a cup. She howled a few nights and it took about 3 weeks for her to learn to go back to sleep but eventually she held my nipple and that worked......however we have just moved and in the tiredness and chaos and her not feeling familiar in the cot and needing to go to sleep together we have undone it all and will have to start again. Arse. It did work though ...but...you need a month. Do you need to do it now is what I would ask yourself. Goodluck xx

[SquidgersMummy]

Ps I think 8mths is young for self settling too...my dd is 14mths and needs buggy/car for am nap and feeds for pm nap and bed. I was concerned a while back but a BF Consultant told me 18mths. We are now not quite feeding to sleep at bedtime and then I am stroking her but this is a new development. Often I had to lie down with her but then she started crawling and was so tired I could put her down and she was flat out until 12/1. They can be more unsettled before a developmental leap...any crawling going on yet? Could it be that? X

[Aimeelou28]

Thanks bittenipples and SquidgersMummyYou've made me feel a bit better- glad your babies have improved! I love cuddling up feeding her but just the problem is I'm not even having chance to get back to sleep inbetween feeds it's so frequent, so I feel pretty lousy! She hasn't started crawling yet, that's a great point that maybe something like that is causing it. She has just started waving hello and goodbye, so perhaps there's a lot of thinking going on in her brain right now.... Good luck to you, hope things keep going in the right direction with your LOs x

[Nicknamefail]

My dd used to feed multiple times a night and only boob was the answer. We did gradual retreat which took a month but the beauty if going so slowly was that d never got too distressed and we never left her to cry. She took about 3 weeks to go to sleep by herself but the night wake ups were gone in 10 days! Mostly we cuddled when she woke up, (dh did the wake ups so she wouldn't get distressed for my milk) until it got to 4 hours and then she was allowed a feed, but then only cuddles again until the next 4 hours. Before we started I thought she would never fall asleep without the boob, but it is amazing that dh can now do it. For us, moving the final feed to before bath worked well, because with the pull off method they get cross because you are taking away from where they are comfy and happy, whereas bath, story cuddle sleep progresses on nicely.
Our nap times are still rocked to sleep though, don't see her ever napping in the cot!
Good luck.

[Aimeelou28]

Just an update on this in case anyone finds it useful and wants to try something similar, I'm visiting my mum for a few nights and she offered to have dd in with her to see if she could calm her without her needing so many feeds- and she did really well! I didn't get a wink of sleep myself because it was so weird not being cuddled up, but dd only needed feeds at 1:30 and then 5:30 (at which point she decided she was ready to get up) which is a huge improvement for her. Inbetween those times she woke up a few times and mum managed to get her off with stroking her arm and shushing her. I've never been able to do that! So we're going to carry on like this the next two nights before I go home and then hopefully I'll be able to pick it up when I get back; maybe then the extra wakings will start to be phased out when she realizes she can manage without a boob... who knows?