Breastfedding to sleep/during night is it wrong?!

[minidriver74]

Hi,

I'm a confused mum of a 8 and a half month old baby. Went to see my health visitor yesterday and she strongly recommended i stop breastfeeding my baby to sleep and stop giving feeds during the night.
It just I forgot to ask WHY?
Tryed the controlled crying tonight and it caused so much truama for my little one it took 1.5hrs to get her down.
Previously a quick feed and she would be drowsy if not asleep and bedtime took 5 mins.
I have discussed the night feeds with my husband a couple of months ago and we both agreed we love having baba in our bed when she wakes about 4 a.m. and I BF lying down so its easier than if i feed her in the feeding chair then put her back down.
Am I making a rod for my own back? Or should i go with my gut feeling and maintain my happy little routine? Thanks in advance x

If you and your baby are happy then keep going the way you are.

I have BF all 4 of mine to sleep and coslept with them until past a year (well DS is only 10 weeks) and the 3 of them went into their own cot and room fine.

Your baby your choice just ignore HV

sometimes HV really make me scratch my head.

if you are only feeding to sleep at proper bedtime (not naps) and during night feeds, i fail to see what the problem is.

Surely during night feeds you want your LO to fall back asleep as quickly as possible. That assumes of course that the reason LO is waking is because of hunger and she cannot be settled back to sleep without eating.

I would say keep doing what your doing if you and baby are happy with it.

I'm co-sleeping & bf - nothing wrong with bf a baby to sleep imho.

Go with your gut feeling and maintain your happy little routine! Absolutely!

I am still feeding DS (18mo) to sleep and at night. It works well so why change it?

IMO this is how nature designed us, why mess with it?

The way I see it, DS has been gradually weaning by cutting down on feeds during the day but the night time ones will probably be the last to go. And as I intend to feed until he's 2 (unless it stops naturally) like the WHO recommends so I'm in no hurry to stop!

He hardly wakes in the night any more, but he does wake for a feed in the early morning. As I'm away at work 3 days of the week I think it's especially good as a way to connect with each other IYSWIM.

Your HV's words make me actually. How dare she. She is talking mince.

You're doing a brilliant thing for you little one and should be congratulated not put off.

The only other thing the HV might have been referring to is the potential effect of breastmilk on teeth. They recommended to me brushing teeth after the last feed. I have to say that I ignored this advice and happily fed both of mine to sleep with no apparent problems.

Does your HV have any children. Just wondering as my lovely HV is very good at givng advice like this but has never had children herself.

Do what is feels right for you, your baby and your family. Soundds like you are doing a really good job to me and he's too young for Controlled Crying IMHO.

just wanted to add that the whole rod for own back thing = a load of bollox.

Enjoy your baby while she's little, before long she will be a tantrumming threenager

It is entirely dependent on your child. I fed DD (now 5) to sleep and through the night until she decided to give up breastfeeding at 15 months. She was then "old enough" to start doing a proper bedtime routine of stories etc and so quickly learnt another way to wind down.

DS was/is a dreadful sleeper and I had to give up feeding him (again at 15 months) because he was waking more and more (every 45 minutes) for a quick snack.

Relaxed bedtimes, sleepy early morning feeds - these are things to be enjoyed. HV will have seen children with sleep problems down to the fact that some children find it hard to ever make a transition to self-settling, but this is by no means a certain consequence of feeding to sleep.
Go with it, enjoy it (I REALLY miss it) and smile sweetly at your health visitor.

I fed DD1 to sleep because she was an appalling sleeper and I would do anything and I mean anything to get her to sleep. Total desperation ruled. She didn't learn to settle herself to sleep until she was seriously ill aged 6.

DD2 came along and I fed her to sleep as a newborn. She had to co-sleep for the first 4 weeks to maintain her body temp. Then she stopped turning blue, I started putting her in the cradle and she went straight down awake or asleep no problem.

I think the message is do what is right for you and your baby because they are all different and if you disrupt something which is working you could make it all go to pot and really regret it.

Go with what works for you and ignore the interfering HV.

thanks guys

Thats the support i needed. Just gonna burn my 'sleep guide' and go with what works

and will defo use this site again when i need reassurance (or a backbone!)

x

i breastfed both my 22 month and 3 1/2 year old 2 sleep as babies in our bed and co-slept until 6 months (the point at which the HVs were recommending turfing them out into their own rooms). i also attended an awesome BF support group (or boob club as babydaddy calls it!). it was led by HVs who were specially trained bf advisors. they say they are (legally?) obliged not to recommend co-sleeping...something to do with smothering, i think. also, although they were very gentle, they did encourage, what they called sleep hygiene, which i suppose is just getting your baby to learn to go to sleep by themselves...i was too exhausted for this and liked co-sleeping but now my kids still 'need' both me and a bottle in order to sleep, even in their own beds, it is getting quite tiring after so many years but is getting much better with the older 1 as he matures. also his sleep association with a bottle has implications on his ability to stay dry during the night (even on a very small amount of milk)...so i suppose what i'm saying is that i did it and would prob do it again, but there are possible implications...now i am very jealous of my friends who didn't do what we are doing, and whos kids dont have any sleep issues. gd lk!

oh, and also my standard HV who was not all that into bf wasnt very helpful and so i did ignore alot of what she had to say, especially as it was in direct contravention of what the bf advisor HVs were saying.
do you have a bf support group near you?...check it out...my experience was a lifesaver

Sorry you had to go through the controlled crying Just lie if your HV asks how she is sleeping in the future, I always have done. Probably not that helpful if it means she goes and recommends controlled crying to some other poor mum who doesn't really want to do it But at least she is off my back.

Stick with your routine. Changing a routine is traumatic and pointless.

I fed DS 'on demand' I think they call it these days. He slept in my bed and would go straight back to sleep when he was done feeding.
Since then he has always slept well progressing into a natural bedtime routine that he still follows at 11 years old. Ok so he has his own bed and doesn't bf anymore (thank christ) but none the less, he has always gone to bed without issue.

Don't let your HV create a problem hwere there isn't one.

Many children like a warm drink at bedtime but I think the 4am feed is probably just for comfort rather than nourishment. If you don't mind be woken up at 4am every day then there's no need to change. But if you can encourage her to settle herself back to sleep rather than need the breast then you'll all get a full night's sleep.

Do what works for you and your baby and makes you both happy, not what some HV thinks she might do if she were you.

I've just bf ds (7m) to sleep for his morning nap and then sat and cuddled him until my arm started to ache. What a lovely special time it was

Can I jsut ask about the teeth thing once again?

I fed my now 20 month to sleep (have recently done Dr Jay Gordon's nightweaning) AFTER she's had her teeth brushed.

I had my daughter abroad so avoided any HV haranguing, but a dentist gave me a hard time about demand feeding a toddler (I was demand feeding until a month or so ago) saying she saw "loads of demand-fed toddlers with decaying teeth". I had no reason to disbelieve her, but did think it was odd that she said 'loads'. As far as I'm aware demand feeders of toddlers are fairly thin on the ground.

I had heard breastmilk isn't napalm for the teeth and that the nipple goes back into the mouth so it's not like there's much pooling. Plus I don't really think she drank much anyway.

It's like Curb Your Enthusiasm when Larry David can't choose between 'Doctor, or Pharmacist'!

Two quick things:

BF to sleep and in the night is fine (actually i think it's how things are supposed to be). Your HV is labouring under the misapprehension that your DC will never stop this of their own accord - which is rubbish. They will grow out of it in time - every animal does it and every animal grows out of it.

Breastmilk is not the same as Formula. Formula sugars are bad for teeth so you do need to brush after a FF and before Bedtime. BUT Breastmilk is great for teeth - it actually helps them calcify and strengthens the enamel. I read this once and will try and track down the article/research.

actually I should have been more specific and said 'every mammal' not 'animal' - sorry!

this could have been the article I read

"another experiment even indicated that the teeth became stronger when immersed in breastmilk"

I'm inclined to think that Mother Nature is a vast deal more clued up than people like to credit her.... It just doesn't make sense that BFing would cause tooth decay...

My logic: If you assume that having teeth increases the range of things that you can eat and therefore improves your overall nutrition. Anything that decreases the amount of teeth you have would give you a disadvantage in live. Any disadvantage leads to a decrease in the number of offspring you are able to successfully rear and therefor the characteristic dies out.

Thanks Knitter, I'd be interested. Seeing as longer term breastfeeding would seem to be the default (unless we as parents step in to stop it) I'd be surprised if it was something very harmful to teeth.#

In general, I hate this nagging argument that if you don't get your 6+ month old to self settle you are doing them a parental and developmental disservice. I've had my mother say she'll lag developmentally because she wakes frequently. Thing is, whether or not they are fed back to sleep, or chunter by themselves, they do not sleep through without waking/stirring.

I have no problem with CC (not for me, but can see how in today's world it can sometimes be a last resort) or a bit of gradual retreat but don't like it dressed up as being actually necessary for the child.

and while I'm at it here is what kellymom thinks of BFing to sleep:

It's very normal and developmentally appropriate for babies to nurse to sleep and to wake 1-3 times during the night for the first year or so

I agree.

If you intervened in the parenting-to-sleep process then your baby wouldn't NOT wake up every three hours or so. It's just they lie awake/cry/shuffle about and fall asleep.

Net net, I reckon a fed-to sleep baby probably gets as much sleep as a non-fed to sleep baby, excepting differing personalities, habits and so on.

But the emotive language bandied about 'my babie was a zombie in the day, I HAD to do CC', 'She wasn't developing because she wasn't sleeping though' 'terrible sleeper, keeps waking every 2 hours, I'm tearing my hair out' all serve to make this seem abnormal, deeply undesirable, and lazy parenting.

But yes, 24 hr round the clock parenting is fucking hard and on a bad day has pushed me to the very edge and into some dark moments. And you feel bad about it, feel like you're not parenting responsibly because culturally we expect a baby of over 6 months to suddenly move on from infancy (when no one criticises you for cuddling them to sleep) to self-settling. Just like that (as Tommy Copper would say)

apols spelling. I'm knackered!

I do enjoy my HVs visits - I'm getting quite a nice little collection of rods for my back

co-sleeping? check
bf at night? check
carrying in sling/almost constant contact? check