"gently move away from..." can fuck off

[MolliciousIntent]

If you'll pardon my french. But I've been trying to "gently move away from" feeding my baby to sleep (as advised by so many on here) and I just don't get how it's supposed to be possible without screaming! I remove the nipple, she thrashes, demands it back, and then sobs if she doesn't get it. As soon as she does get it, fast asleep.

And before I get a huge influx of people telling me to just go with it cs it's normal, I was completely happy to do that until a fortnight ago, when it became impossible to unlatch her without her waking up and screaming. She will literally only sleep with my nipple in her mouth. No amount of gentle this or that will do, it is boob or bust. Ive tried feeding lying down/safe cosleeping but I've got a bad back and literally cannot sustain the position needed for safe cosleeping/boobsleeping without waking up immobilised by pain.

She's 4.5m and I'm genuinely counting down the days to 6m when I can try Ferber.

Will she use a dummy?

No, the sheer outrage when I tried it would have been hilarious if I hadn't been so desperate. The second time she gagged so hard she projectile vomited.

I've now been attempting to put her down for 4 hours. I have to work tomorrow!

Just wanted to send you sympathy as I vividly remember this.
In the end I did the "controlled crying ". Is that the Ferber thing people talk about now? I'm so old!
Nothing else worked. I felt horrible but the very good news is that in each case it was literally only 2 nights of pain. Third night was like magic.
I didn't do it till about 12 months but I wish I'd steeled myself earlier. I was so touched out.
It's cold comfort now but I wanted to give you hope to hang onto for the near future.

Yeah I did controlled crying/Ferber with my first daughter at 10m and it worked really well, but it's not recommended before 6m. I don't mind feeding to sleep but I have to be able to put her down, holy fuck.

My first baby was like this, we sleep trained at 6 months and it was sheer hell, but it did work. We're now preparing to sleep train 6 month old DC2, people don't understand that sleep training isn't an easy option, we tried lots of other things and nothing worked.

It both hilarious and infuriating the amount of people that post on sleep training threads that their child never needed sleep training or just to cosleep. Congratulations if that worked for you, but it didn't for us!

I'm in the same situation OP, so frustrated.
DD is 15 months now, and I was ok with CS until she's started to clench her teeth a bit while breastfeeding. It doesn't hurt a lot, but it's uncomfortable and stops me from sleeping. And when DD falls asleep she'd sometimes completely close her mouth on my nipple and each time I feel like a part of my breast has been bitten off (fortunately it was ok each time, no bleeding even, but it hurt like hell and I'd scream every time).
She also wakes up each time I unlatch her, becomes hysterical if I don't provide her the boob immediately and nothing seems to work. No dummys, nothing. For now the only thing that works is to make DH look after DD at these moments, she knows he can't give her what she wants and she relatively easily drifts off to sleep. Maybe I should just ask DH to put DD so sleep every night, because I often feel like I can't take it no more...

How many times is she waking during the night?

Instead of making life miserable, why not try formula. Of course she might not like it at first, but persevere, you might both get some sleep

toucan surely that's a reasonable solution- let your DH put your DD to bed. Why are you continuing to breast feed when it is causing you to scream in pain?

Do you have Ferber’s book?

You don’t have to wait till 6 months to fix the sleep association with your boob.
Here is a quote from his book regarding night feeds.

feed to sleep. Then gently press under chin. This allows you to remove nipple without waking baby. A magic trick I’ve badly
explained. I’ll see if I can find a better description of how to do it

@AussieAussieAussie depends how many times I try to take her off the breast! Generally speaking she wakes maybe twice or 3 times between 10 and 7 but getting her to go back down is the real issue. And yes Ferber says you can drop feeds before 6 months but how are you supposed to do that without actually doing CC? Which isn't appropriate before 6m?

@CloseKnittedSilkPrint she doesn't take a bottle at the moment so that's out.

Tried it, doesn't work, she wakes as soon as she loses the nipple.

I feel your pain. My son wakes half hourly to every two hours for boob/ milk. We co-sleep too he's two and a bit.

My first was the same though. Didn't sleep until her sister was born aged two and a half.
My middle child was and still is a brilliant sleeper. Didn't do anything any different with her than I did - do with the other two. All of mine were premature so from teeny tiny were being woken two hourly for feeds. I think this had a huge impact on early sleep habits.
The longest I've slept for is two and a half hours in the last two and a half years.
I'm not trying controlled crying. I can't bare to hear him cry like I know he will. It's not good for them. High cortisol levels are really not good for babies/ young children. I don't want him to think he's been abandoned to figure out how to sleep. Have a read about damage to the brain caused by high cortisol.

Anyway, that's me, this is you. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Can you quickly replace nipple with dummy? Warm it up in your mouth first. If she’s gagging, try a smaller one

Ferber suggests fixing sleep associations before 6 months (see quote).
He has a special method to reduce nighttime feedings gradually which is different to the ‘progressive waiting’ approach.

The child is screaming , not Op

@Ragwort tbh I'm just dreading the tantrums DD is going to throw so I keep hoping she'd refuse to breastfeed by herself. Many people's babies I know stopped breastfeeding at 8-12 months because they didn't want anymore. So I am saying to myself that'll happen naturally... but it doesn't look like it will, so I guess I have to put my big girl pants on and sort it out myself.

@AngelinaFibres actually that's me screaming in pain, PP got it right

Ah I see, will take a look. I've tried a number of gentle approaches with no joy, maybe Ferber can help.

Tried it, tried 4 different types, she's a dreadful nipple snob and only wants the real deal

@Merryweather80 thanks for your opinion, I'm happy with my choices.

Try shush pat or another contact method that doesn't involve your nipple.

And definitely font vo sleep

1. Try keeping the boob in for 10 min until she is so deeply asleep she passes the “arm drop test” (lift her arm and see if it falls back down floppy without her stirring). Try gently stepping away then.

2. You can sleep train at 4 mo. I did. You just have to be more careful. My HV helped massively.

3. 4 mo sleep regression is real and AWFUL.