8.5 month old settling to sleep - just can’t seem to do it alone.

[Flummoxedandtired]

Hi all,

I need some hive mind assistance.

My daughter is breastfed - it was a struggle as we had a two week hospital stay after she was born due to her having meningitis. We cracked it once we got home and from then on she hasn’t taken a bottle since.

My issue is - she has always been fed to sleep. It’s like my superpower. Over the passed few months I have been trying to gradually wean her off of that and replaced it with being rocked to sleep, put down very drowsy or pretty much asleep most nights.
I am baffled by the idea that some people can put their babies down awake. She goes from 0-100 as soon as her sleeping bag is on, we don’t have a chance to lay with her and read or cuddle as she is usually losing her marbles by that point. I can’t deal with listening to her scream and be sick etc, so I usually soothe her with boob and detach just before she’s asleep, to rock her.

Any tips? Will she grow out of this? Is it separation anxiety.?
I’m going back to work in 16 weeks and I’m terrified that she will be still reliant on feeding to sleep.

Side note - once she is asleep, she usually sleeps through or at least sleeps from 7pm ish to 4 or 5am for a feed and then back down until 6:30-7am. So she can self settle, during the night.

[soniamumsnet]

Hi @Flummoxedandtired, we're just bumping this thread for you in the hope that some Mumsnetters will be along shortly with some advice.

[Nuckyscarnation]

Why are you terrified of her still needing feeding to sleep when you go back to work OP?
Sounds like she’s a good sleeper once she’s down, so why does it matter how she gets there? I’m just trying to get a better picture of your fears😊

Needing to be fed to sleep at 8.5 months isn’t separation anxiety. It’s totally biologically normal. We are a breastfeeding species! Also I’m guessing every fed to sleep child grows out of it eventually or else the world would be full of adults who need feeding to sleep.

You sound like you’re giving yourself a really hard time when in reality it sounds like you’re doing a great job I have no idea what putting a baby down drowsy but awake entails. Neither myself or any of my mums friends have ever achieved it! I genuinely think it’s a myth made up by the baby sleep industry to torture us poor mums!

[DC3dilemma]

Yeah, I agree, don’t beat yourself up with feeding a baby to sleep. Virtually all mammals do this, it’s just human’s who get precious about it and the idea that they should settle themselves is a human invention.

I’m have a 10month old. Admittedly my 3rd child so i’m fairly relaxed about these things. At the moment she still breast feeds first thing in the morning and when I put her to bed. I feed her, put her down, about 7.30pm. She tends not to wake until 6am but if she ever does, DH settles her so she doesn’t smell milk/want milk. If I have to stop feeding, we’ll give her a little skippy cup of milk and rock her to sleep, eventually making that a cup of water...usually by about 2 years old, a story takes over and they’ll fall asleep while being read to. However you put her to sleep, if you are getting her down for a good 12-14 hour sleep, you are creating good sleeping habits.

[DC3dilemma]

By the way, in the next couple of months, if you want to eliminate that 4am wakening, can you ask someone else to settle her then? If you have a partner at home make that their job. We did this with all 3 -fed on demand, started bedtime routine, continued to feed on demand until down to one feed through the night, then DH cuddled and soothed for that one wakening -less than 2 weeks later we had a baby sleeping thru, worked each time.

[meow1989]

Ds isnt breastfed but at a year old we still rock him to sleep - if we put him down he will sit straight up or stand at the bars... we are just going with it, hes so active now that I appreciate the quiet cuddle time (well, quiet once he is asleep, he cries till he falls asleep as the boy has major fomo!)

[Flummoxedandtired]

@Nuckyscarnation Thanks for your reply and lovely words. It's reassuring.

I guess I'm scared of her needing to feed to sleep as I return to work because i don't want her naps/sleep and therefore days to be stressful or disrupted. My mum is looking after her for one day a week and she will be with a childminder for another two. If she can't have me there to help her go down, I don't know how she will.

I'm hoping to hold onto the night time feed for as long as she needs - i can't imagine stopping that any time soon!

All in all, I just want to feel ok with feeding her to sleep but its so hard to, with all the resounding criticism from others/society. You're right - we are a breast feeding species! and 9 months is still very young. It's not like i'm wacking her on the boob and sending her off to big school for the day!

[Latenightreader]

Oh goodness, I could have written this. My baby is nine months next week and I'm going back to work in August. She feeds to sleep unless she's in the pram, sling or carseat (often doesn't sleep then) and I've been struggling to get her into her own cot (currently in with me). Mum will have her full time after I go back and clearly thinks I should be training her to sleep on her own, but it feels so brutal - wish I knew what to do for the best...

[Flummoxedandtired]

@Latenightreader - I agree, the idea of sleep training and letting her cry is mind boggling to me, i don't know how people do it.
I'm in a sea of two extremes of advice, either being told that it's totally ok and natural etc or told to sleep train. I'm at a loss.

All the while, my daughter is sleeping pretty well and is a happy little girl.. I hate the idea of changing anything.

[PleaseGoogleIt]

DD was a year old last week and I decided yesterday that the rocking to sleep had to stop (I don't BF but she has fed to sleep too until about a month ago). It was getting to a point where I couldn't put her down as she just wanted to sleep on me.

I decided to just put her down in her cot and stay with her until she slept, every time she stood up I laid her back down gently and then stroked her back, sang a lullaby - I then stopped the singing and the rubbing slowly and retreated until she started crying/standing again.

It took an hour at bedtime and an hour at 1.30 this morning but tonight, it's taken 20 minutes and it's just like she knew that it was time for sleep once she was in there.

Last night was really tough but if it works, I'll be so glad I did it.