to be considering Ferber in these circumstances?

[HumanDummy2022]

Bit of a shameless AIBU for traffic, sorry! It’s more of a WWYD?

10.5 month DS. Exclusively breastfed, currently on three milk feeds a day, eats solids well - three meals a day.

For several months now he hasn’t been able to sleep for me unless he’s feeding. Attempts at swaying just result in thrashing about and shouting. He has on occasion self settled (we used the Lucy Wolfe gentle sleep solution approach) but recently teeth, colds, stomach bugs etc have gotten in the way of that.

DH can sway & sing him to sleep 90% of the time. My mum can read him books until he falls asleep on her.

I’ve tried everything but he absolutely won’t settle for me. We think it must be because I breastfeed him. He doesn’t even want a feed I don’t think, but it’s the only tool I’ve got to relax him.

Problem is he doesn’t unlatch so I have to feed him into a complete milk coma, pull him off the boob then pray he doesn’t wake on the transfer to the cot. It’s 50/50 whether he wakes and it usually takes 2-3 attempts over the course of an hour or so or feeding.

BUT, once he’s down he will generally sleep through the night. Doesn’t matter whether he’s been swayed by DH, self-settled, or has been fed.

It really gets me down that I can’t soothe my own baby to sleep. Also DH is going to go away for work for a week soon and I’m going to be screwed!

We’re considering introducing formula (as it’s too early for cow’s milk) for one feed initially to try to accelerate dropping breastfeeding. This makes me a bit sad and I’m aware if it doesn’t work I’m removing the only tool I’ve got to get him to sleep!
And/or we do Ferber. But this also seems cruel and disproportionate for a baby who sleeps through the night! But nap and bedtimes are now such an exhausting struggle.

WWYD?

Considering babies aren't meant to be taking a bottle after 12 months and are able to drink cow's milk from that time too I'd wonder about putting yourself through weaning to a bottle and onto formula when you're almost at the time to be stopping it all?

@Pyri

The Ferber book says very specifically how to deal with babies vomiting on themselves as it’s a common outcome of leaving them to cry (which is what the Ferber method is).

And I said THREADS, not POSTS.

In the sections regarding looking after babies there are loads of threads with people recommending it. There are 5 listed in ‘similar threads’ alone.

Thanks @Rowen32, I wouldn’t bother with a bottle. He drinks water well from a munchkin cup so we would probably just use that for formula then switch to whole milk at 1 year.

That said, I only want to try it when I’m confident he doesn’t have a cold or bug, so he doesn’t fill up on formula instead of having breast milk with all the antibodies etc, but with the amount of viruses going round atm that may be months away!

A few people have mentioned “gentle” sleep training methods. Please could someone recommend one that they’ve used with success?

Sorry to anyone who is horribly offended by the mere mention of sleep training... I’m sat feeding at the moment, as I have been for the last hour apart from the two failed transfer attempts where my beautifully sleeping baby woke up, cried and pushed me away when I tried to cuddle and away him.

I’m tired, hungry, need to pee and would like to go downstairs and have a glass of bubbly with my husband for NYE. I’m also struggling to see how it’s kinder to DS to do this silly broken sleep & unnecessary extra feed dance every other evening rather than do a temporary intervention of some kind that will help him settle down in the cot (the one he is perfectly happy to be in for 10 hours a night!).

Sorry, emotional this evening..!

And to clarify - by temporary intervention I don’t mean Ferber. As mentioned earlier, we’ve decided we couldn’t do that. Things are tricky, but not desperate.

You have a baby thay you can reliably get to sleep and then not have to mother all night , you have it good. It will change in due course, honest.

I have several friends who had success with The No Cry Sleep Solution.

I found no easy way to get my tricky sleeper to go down and had multiple wakings for 3 years.

Yes this! Nothing worked with my first but this really worked with my second. Double bed and then roll away taking my pillow with me!

Have you tried Dr Jay Gordon's night weaning method Here ? We had some success with it. It's a v gentle method and he's a big fan of breastfeeding and bed sharing.

I was in your shoes and chose to ride it out. I know it's tough. At 18m baby now sleeps well and I can transfer to the cot without waking 9/10 times and get a good five hours before a wake up most nights.

Oh and I'm also still feeding to sleep and throughout the day on demand so didn't need to wean at all.

There is no way on this earth I would consider Ferber on a baby that sleeps through the night! Count your blessings!

My baby slept through but the hour or so of rocking, singing etc before bed every night was killing me… it’s absolutely ok to not want an hour of misery every evening! I used Ferber and within a week he was being put in the cot awake after his little routine and he’d nod off by himself… it was life changing! Give it a go, it definitely isn’t cruel or awful, he never even got close to the getting sick part I think that’s the very very extreme end of the stick… I’d recommend it to anyone to try

Sorry if this has already been suggested OP, I skimmed the thread. Imo feeding to sleep is a superpower, not a bad habit! Could you get a floor bed? You can buy lovely fancy ones from etsy but a firm mattress or futon on the floor is also fine. You have to babyproof the room VERY well! My DS has a small double floor bed where I lie down to feed him to sleep. He's nearly 3 now and usually sleeps most of the night in his floor bed then comes and climbs into my bed for cuddles early in the morning.

Also if it's taking an hour of feeding and repeated resettles to get him to sleep I would try making his bedtime slightly later (try 30 mins) and/or doing more physical play in the early evening so he's wiped out! You want to get him to that sweet spot where he's not getting overtired yet but 15 mins on the boob completely conks him out!

You can do a lesser version of Ferber which I did, so I only leave baby up til 3 mins under a year, and now 5 min Max each time

It is not a common outcome of ferber. It’s a possibility, but certainly not a common outcome

OP it sounds like it's the transferring that's the problem really not the feeding. So the easiest solution would be to change his cot for a floor bed (or even a mattress on slats), baby proof the room, safe space around the mattress away from walls incase he rolls off. No bed guards as someone suggested up thread as they're not considered safe until 18 months and you don't need one with a floor bed anyways.

Then you can feed to sleep and roll away without the need to transfer

We slept trained DC with Ferber method at 4 months. Child is now 7.5 months and sleeps from 7pm-5am.

Ferber is demonised, it's a great method. Later you leave it; the harder it gets.

@BabyOnBoard90

Even Ferber says it shouldn’t be done before 6 months.

Fucking hell.

Poor kid.

No sympathy needed. Currently happily asleep

OP, I was in a near identical position to you but without the bonus of sleeping through. Completely understand how miserable the hour + long put downs are.

We couldn't bring ourselves to use Ferber but we have instead used "controlled comforting". There's zero distress, just a lot of anger when baby first realised we were doing something different. We started with naps then moved onto bed times when he'd cracked the new process. Essentially we follow a very consistent bedtime routine, kiss him good night and lay him down then shush Pat until he's asleep. When he sits up we just calmly lay him down again. Over and over and over. I was 100% convinced it wouldnt work because ALL he wanted was breastfeeding to sleep in my bed but on the first day he lay down after 15 mins of crying and fell asleep. I was there and comforting him the whole time. We then moved onto nights and had a couple of long nights of laying him down and shushing at 2am but again, he fell asleep and stayed there. On the second night he woke, cried and before I could get to him he'd settled down to sleep again. Not because he knew I wouldn't come and comfort but because the incentive to wake was removed and he'd rather have been asleep. Next we reduced our interaction until he was comforted by our presence then just by a kiss and being laid down.

I will say I spent a couple of weeks moving breastfeeds away from sleep and that meant DH had to do all naps and bedtimes but worth it in the long run.

Happy to answer questions - feel free to message me!

We slept trained for naps. Weaned off night feeds at 6 months which was easier as DC had already learnt to self-soothe.

why are you justifying it to me? I’ve just said what the program itself says.

My goodness, you want to sleep train a baby that sleeps through the night already, just because it takes a bit of effort for you to get him to go to bed? You've pretty much got a unicorn baby already...

It's normal for them to feed to sleep at this age (and much older). He's not using you as a dummy. A dummy is the replacement you, not the other way around.

Sorry if I seem incredulous, but bedtimes take a while often, and your finishing about being stuck upstairs at 8pm because your champagne is downstairs. That's parenting little ones tbh.

A bedtime taking an hour really isn't that bad - for a lot of kids that's what you get (at least) well into childhood. My kids are rubbish sleepers but bedtime tonight was 50m for the 3yo and 1.30 for the 5yo (and both have woken twice since...) Sounds awful, but very similar to a lot of other kids we know.

You've got it so, so good. It sounds like your little one sometimes self soothes (which is more than most of his age do) seems relatively well, and then sleeps. Amazing. If you can nail the sleepy transfer then you are living the dream.