Creating future problems re sleep

[NRUK]

Daughter is now about six months old. She is asleep by 8 every night and wakes up a couple of times in the night for a small feed. Since birth she has only ever gone to sleep while she has been breastfeeding. I realise at some point that this will have to stop as she cannot breastfeed forever and that she will have to "learn" to fall asleep on her own.

Is there the potential for future problems???

I don't know I think this depends on the child, and your needs.

I know that now at 20 months I've retrained mine to have a feed, then roll over and go to sleep, and it hasn't been difficult at all (in fact he started it, and I just encouraged). He sometimes still drops off while feeding, but then he sometimes drops off without a feed at all (eg. if dad/grandmother put him to bed).

If you have a pressing need to train them earlier, before they do it themselves, perhaps it's more of an issue (but I suspect like most habits it would only take a couple of weeks to break)

I think this is one of the great myths of baby trainers, that if you start feeding to sleep you will always have feed to sleep. Feeding to sleep is great, it works because of the hormones in the milk, it seems like we are designed to fall asleep whilst breastfeeding. I found my son (who fed to sleep until he was at least 18 months), just seemed to learn to roll over and go to sleep at some stage, I did not have to teach him how to go to sleep. Now he is nearly 4 and he can close his eyes and go to sleep within about a minute - much quicker than I can! I have never tried to teach him to go to sleep.

You are absolutely not storing up problems for the future, so don't worry about it. Like chocolate says we are designed for it and one day she'll just learn to do it by herself. My DD was fed to sleep for much longer than your DD and it has hasn't caused any problems. In fact now she's 4 she is quite adamant that she can't go to sleep in the evening without a story, as they get older their sleep associations just change.

Kellymom has some good information on nursing to sleep here .

Thanks for that, I am def not complaining as we have had hardly any parenting problems so far. However she did decide at 5 this morning that she wanted to get up!!!!

My DD is 17 mos, we used some gentle night weaning (ala Jay Gordon) around a year - if she wakes up before 5am now, we usually mumble "go back to sleep", and she usually does. After 5am she gets a short feed then the same admonition to go back to sleep. :)

Think that's pretty normal too NRUK unfortunately. Dr Sears a couple of tips for early waking here although it is aimed at toddlers rather than babies. Think that Elizabeth Pantley also deals with early waking in the No Cry Sleep Solution although have to admit that its so long since I've read it that I could be wrong.

Glad you've not had too many problems so far as well .

As I am at work all day. to be honest I quite a like an hour in the morning when she is happy and smiley, even if it is at 5am!
I know I will miss it when she is older.

One of my babies went through a big growth spurt around 8months and suddenly couldn't sleep unless he had a tummy full of milk. The other 2 I managed to night wean at 7months when they were having 3 good solid meals a day and even supper just before bed to make sure they were really stuffed.

I did have big problems with ds1 as he never self settled to sleep so I had to sit with him for 1/2hr at least, so it can cause a problem but it depends on your long term plan - I was exhausted at 7months and pregnant so needed it to stop.

I breastfed my son to sleep every day of his life, including naps until he weaned at 4. He is now 7 and even though he really needs routine and lots of snuggles at bedtime (what child doesn't), and gets in to bed with us at about 2-3am, (which we're fine with) he doesn't still need to breast feed to to sleep! Remarkable!

Re: early morning waking, when DS did this (and it was really annoying) we pretended to be asleep and he got bored. I'd also more often that not, stick a boob in his mouth and he'd feed to sleep again (that's what they're there for )

Sorry meant to add (keep doing this, forgetting stuff and then adding a post script!): I believe that feeding to sleep probably does mean that your baby will take longer to get to the stage where they can fall asleep by themselves. However, because you're going at their pace, it's more likely that when they do learn to do it, they've done it when they're developmentally ready, not because you've taught them.

I think a lot of sleep "mythology" stems from the days of the 4 hourly feed schedule and the obsession with "sleeping through". Much of what we think we know about infant sleep isn't necessarily breastfed infant sleep.

Agree with Badgerina, although children stop falling asleep bf'ing at different points. My 2.3 y.o. doesn't fall asleep feeding any more and I wish he did as it's much harder work to get him off now.

As predicted today, Daughter was still asleep when I left for work which is rubbish in the morning!!!