How do you teach baby to self settle if they feed to sleep?

[spekulatius]

At the moment DD feeds to sleep. And will only nap if I hold her or lie next to her on the bed. Well, for the last 3nights she's been in bed with me as well as she cant go back to sleep without sucking on me. dummy doesnt work during the night. She's only 6 months old and I don't really mind but I need to go back to work, including night shift. So I know that she needs to learn to self settle and a bought the book by Andrea Grace and an e-book by Nicole Johnson (though they seem to contradict each other slightly). All of them say put the baby in the cot while they are still awake. How do I do that? As soon as she's latched on she closes her eyes, I really don't know when she's finished. She'll come off herself at one point but is already asleep. What do others do?

You say she naps if you lie next to her. So, how about this. Feed before bedtime, lie with her till she falls asleep, transfer to cot. Repeat if she wakes and cries. Both of mine progressed naturally from feed to sleep to sleep next to me. I found all shh-pats etc just stimulated baby more. Good idea to associate fluffy toy/blanket with sleep from as early as possible. In the end, they are happy to go off with just this.

Mine just grew up. Dd1 stopped wanting to be cuddled and wriggled til I realised she was asking to settle in bed. Then I rubbed her back for a few months. Eventually I realised she didn't want that either and we switched to stories.

She was 11mths at start and 18 by end

What she doing? Could she be sending you signals? Trust her.

She has a nap if I lie next to her feeding her then staying with her so that she can she can have a drink whenever she wants. She does the same when I hold her. She feeds to sleep, then every so often she opens her mouth and sucks again. That's the only way I can get her to sleep for more than 30 minutes. I do try her with the dummy and sometimes she will take it instead of breast.

I've tried feeding her lying down until she's asleep, then putting her into cot. Or leaving her in bed with me if my husband is on night shift. But she wakes up every 90 minutes roughly, I know it's not for food and I wouldn't mind if I didn't have to go back to work. Otherwise I would co-sleep all the time until she's ready to be more independent.

When I wanted to discourage night feedings (around 12 months when he was still waking 3/4 times a night) I started by feeding for a short period then putting back saying something like 'sleepy time now DS, sleepy time'. Then this progressed over a few weeks to just tucking him in a saying the same words. If ever he cried a lot I would just feed anyway figuring he needed it (emotionally or nutritionally). Most of the time he would just go back to sleep. Eventually he stopped bothering altogether. Do you have the impression your DD gets plenty of milk in the day?

You just need to break the suck-to-sleep association. You can either go cold turkey, or do something more gradual (try looking up the No Cry Sleep Solution or Pantley Pull-Off). I started trying the gradual approach - feeding til sleepy but taking the nipple out before the baby is actually asleep, then if they cry repeating until the fall asleep without sucking - but actually found cold turkey worked better for us. We swapped bedtime around so that the feed was earlier and then DP rocked to sleep. Then of course we had to wean off rocking later but actually that was pretty easy.