It would be really stupid to drop the bedtime feed, wouldn't it?

[ItDoesntBodenWell]

DD2 is 7 months now and having about 4 feeds a day (and plenty of solids)
The trouble is she feeds to sleep and if something disturbs her while I'm putting her in the cot then I just completely lose an evening. I didn't mind when she was little but I'm starting to get a bit fed up now!

A good evening: bath, boob for about half an hour and I lay her down asleep and all is good.

A bad evening: bath, boobs, fecking dog barks just as I detach her, she goes to bed with her eyes open and is crying about 10 mins later.
So right now I am feeding her again but she looks wide awake and is flinging her arms around and is not actually feeding. This will go on for awhile before I decide enough is enough and pop her in bed, she'll be fine for 15 mins then start shouting again. Repeat for evening until eventually when I put her down she will go to sleep (about 3 hours later than normal do just exhausted) or she has a bottle and settles.

Up until about a month ago we were doing a dreamfeed at 11ish with a bottle and found that we could always put her down awake after that and she'd go to sleep fine (more full, presumably), so I'm really starting to wonder about just stopping this bedtime feed and replacing with a bottle. But then that was the last breastfeed DD1 dropped so it doesn't seem very sensible really to forcibly stop it. Maybe just a regular topup after breastfeeding before bed, so she gets used to going to bed awake?

She'll have teeth soon so will need to have teeth brushed before bed and I really can't be doing with being entirely responsible for her going to sleep every single night. I never had this with DD1, she just seemed to be happy to go to bed awake from quite early on, I don't know how to 'make' it happen!

both my DSs were a bit like this - and with DS2 I droped the evening feed and replaced with a bottle - he was bit older than 7 monts however - but it did work for us - and it was nice that DH could do bedtime

• he kept up the other feeds - still at 16 months has a long feed in the morning

Thanks, that's really good to know

Having moaned posted about it, she's now gone and fallen asleep after the second feed even though she was awake when I put her down. Contrary madam :o

Maybe I'll have a two strikes and you get a bottle regime from now on and try to pop her down a little bit awake more often.

Why can't you feed her and then put her down awake?

Why does the bottle even have to come into it?

Sorry if that was curt.

My DD is 7MO too. I feed her after bath, and then put her down. I always put her down awake. I take her off and jig her a bit so she self settles.

If she's startling and not settling, then a bottle might make her more uptight before bedtime? No?

I can, and do, put her down awake when she is having an awake evening, but it rarely works, she is usually happy awake in bed for a bit but then gets pissed off.

Basically I need to work out how to persuade her to self settle, and the bottle comes in to it because when she has had a bottle in the past she has always been fine to go to bed awake and self settle, which is far rarer after a breast feed. Although, as I said, she has actually settled tonight after second feed with not a single moan, since my first post, so it's good to know she can and maybe I need to pop her to bed a bit more awake regularly somehow.

Bit off topic but I believe it's ok to brush teeth before bedtime bf. Certainly that's what we do. I think that it's only a bottle feed you have to brush teeth after.

I am not really equipped to give advice as my 14mo still feeds to sleep a couple of times a week, but I believe other people have used Elizabeth pantley's pantley pull off technique to stop babies relying on bf to go to sleep.

Thanks KD, I found a description of that technique here
might start trying it tonight, would be fab if that worked.

I started doing the last breastfeed before bath time, so ds was going in to bed awake. He'd go into bed awake and be patted or have his back rubbed til he dropped off.

I've had an easy transition like your dd1, can't remember how it worked, but I think you're right she needs to go into cot awake on a more regular basis. I was keen to avoid feeding to sleep, and so I started looking at a story and having a song between bf and bed, and unlatching if she was going to drop off before we got to story. I used to do the whole bedtime routine to the same CD, and I think the music gave a strong association with sleep. I use that CD for naps now, but I found eventually that playing it in the evening meant she did get very sleepy during bf, so I've stopped for bedtime.

With both of mine it got to the point where I fed them for 15 mins and then put them down, or they would do this. If they are still on plenty of other feeds and have fairly established weaning then it won't hurt. After you've put them down, do controlledcrying, but get your partner to go up so they aren't smelling the milk.