replacing night BF with bottles? not possible?

[WelshCat]

DS is 8 months, he has bottles in the day, and i BF him his bedtime feed, and he wakes up about 3-5-6 (random amounts really) during the night, when i BF him back to sleep. wondering if i switch to bottles at night he might wake up less coz its not worth it so much? or will he end up drinking 6 bottles a night!? which is surely waaaay too much milk.. i dont know.. any ideas?

Do you feed him to sleep? Can he self settle or does he need the breast to get back to sleep?

If that is the root of his wakings, you'll probably just replace sucking on a nipple with sucking on a bottle as a sleep aid.

hmm, yeah tbh i am having trouble working out wtf is waking him up!! he does need the BF to get back to sleep. but when he wakes up crying he isnt actually awake, sometimes i have to wake him up to get him back to sleep (dont know if all babies do this, DS is only one i have...) bought the no cry sleep solution book but amdoing 99% of the things in it already, so clutching at straws now!!!

It probably isn't anything in particular waking him up - he just falls asleep with a nipple in his mouth and then as he comes into a lighter phase of sleep he realises it's gone and cries for it. Then you feed him back to sleep and the cycle begins again! I had exactly the same thing with my ds too.

Have you tried her tips in the NCSS book for breaking the suck-to-sleep habit? Once they can fall asleep on their own without feeding/sucking, when they go into lighter sleep or wake in the night they can get back to sleep without help.

yeah i do that, works a lot of the time, but he falls asleep as soon as he is off. i dont feed him every time he wakes up, but i do have to be in the room for him to fall back asleep. he shares my room still, but that doesnt work in the middle of the night coz he cries, whereas before about 11 he just wakes up and cries then stops when i appear and can usually fall back asleep with out me talking/touching him.

I found I had to do the bedtime feed, then make sure ds was awake before he went in his cot - if I fed him, took him off then put him to bed he was too sleepy and didn't fall asleep by himself. For a while I did the bedtime feed before his bath, now I do a story inbetween the feed and bed.

oooh thats a good idea!! lol i never thought of that. would it make a difference then really? if he fell asleep without breast in mouth.. and would it be better if i could get him to fall asleep without me in the room then?

My ds certainly sleeps loads better if he falls asleep on his own. I'd first work on falling asleep without boob, then move on to falling asleep without you there. I think I went from feeding to sleep to rocking, then to just holding, then to patting him in his cot, then to just sitting by the cot and now I put him down, kiss him, say good night and leave the room. You could probably move quicker than me though.

Sometimes I have to go back in to his room to resettle him, but I leave before he falls asleep. He sometimes still wakes in the night but I don't feed him between 11pm-6am.

what do you do when he wakes in the night then? coz DS is all screamy and stiff when he wakes in the night and flings himself about, BF is the only way i can actually calm him down enough to fall back asleep! or do i just need to do something else? (what, i dont know..)

When I first stopped feeding to sleep and started rocking instead, DP rocked him to sleep at bedtime and then went to him in the night and rocked him back to sleep (I think it was too confusing at first for me to go to him but not feed him). He stopped waking so frequently quite quickly, but it wasn't til he started falling asleep on his own without any "help" at bedtime that we got down to just one or no night wakings. Now when he wakes in the night I wait 5 minutes to see if he goes back to sleep himself, and if he doesn't I go in and pat him/rub his back/shush him until he's calm and then leave again - sometimes he falls asleep straight away, sometimes I have to go back in a couple of times.

Welsh, I'm wondering if he's waking and is concerned about being on his own, as he's upset when he wakes but settle when you BF him. I think that he's maybe looking for his mummy and cuddles, so possibly a bottle would just not be enough to settle him.

If you need more sleep (and who doesn't!) can you bring him into your bed? It's easier to BF and he may be more settled.

I know this isn't always the answer and many people don't want their babies in bed with them (I didn't with DS1 but I have found that with DS2 it's the best way to get a night's sleep which is all that matters to me, and DS2 is much happier with it, so therefore I am too).

Just a suggestion anyway :)

he is actually mostly in my bed after about 11pm, coz i fall asleep feeding him so he just stays there. although last night i may have discovered why he is waking up, he was really windy and i gave him some colic drops and patted his back, and within minutes he was back to sleep, so i just put him back in the cot. he only woke 3 times and i just did that every time. god knows if it will work tonight!

although he did start creche 3 mornings a week a few weeks ago, so i think in the evening it might be a bit of separation anxiety.. its never just one thing is it!