feeding to sleep becoming difficult. what to do instead?

[OhWhatAPalaver]

hello all, from birth i have always fed DD to sleep. she is now 8mo and this is starting to become more difficult as she seems to be endlessly distracted by EVERYTHING. this applies to both nap times and bed time. she won't take a dummy and i am getting a bit fed up of sitting upstairs in the dark waiting for that moment when she is sound asleep so i can break the latch. sometimes it takes several attempts to get her off my boob and in to her cot to sleep and i can be up there for over an hour, it's getting rather tiring.

has anyone manage to break the feeding to sleep cycle? our bedtime routine is otherwise quite nice but it's just dragging on and on at the mo. any advice appreciated :)

I've had lots of periods when feeding to sleep has stopped working.

I started rocking to sleep and putting DS down when completely asleep instead. That worked for ages, then I started lying him down on the bed and patting / rocking him instead. He was much older though - 2 y.o. Feeding to sleep is working again now at 2.8 which is useful.

Have a look at The No Cry Sleep Solution.

Some of the ideas in there worked for us.

Wow I could have written your post myself! My dd is the same age and isn't dropping off like she used to when I bf her at nap and bedtimes. So just this week I've started trying to break the link between feed and sleep for naptimes anyway. This does involve listening to a bit of fussing and crying, but I shh her, pat her back, leave her for a minute or two and repeat and it is getting quicker for her to settle. Then she gets a nice milky snuggle when she wakes up all warm as toast and lovely!
Doing similar at bedtimes, but I do want to keep the bedtime feed so it's a bit harder!
Good luck with it, kinda comforting to know there are others out there doing the boob to cot transfer each night!

as i type i have been trying to get her back to sleep since 3am! its now nearly 5am and i gave up trying to feed her back to sleep about 30 mins ago and came downstairs. she is clearly knackered! tried rocking her to sleep but she is so heavy now my arms can't take it for long. am going to try and feed her again in a min as i don't know what else to do! she won't have any of the sush/pat thing. she usually sleeps quite well once she's actually asleep but the last couple of nights she's not been able to self settle again if she's woke in the night. don't know what's up with her!

My almost 5 month old stopped feeding to sleep a couple of weeks ago so I decided to embrace it as the chance to gradually teach her to self settle. So for naps I now rock her in her pushchair and at bedtime I still feed her but put her down awake and if she needs it I gently put my hand on her tummy, hold her hand and rock her. Clearly not self-settling at all yet but it's a start!

I feed her as soon as she wakes from naps and I think she eats more this way as she's not falling asleep half way through.

In the night I try to wake her a tiny bit after nursing as she will still nurse to sleep for night wakings.

Oh dear that's rotten :( could be a developmental leap, that often weirds them out for a while. Try to be consistent with whatever you do. The worst thing (and I have done this myself) is to start a new routine I.e. not feeding to sleep, which results in crying and upset all round and then give in and go back to the old way cos it works. Then all that crying was for nothing and must send a very confusing message! If my dd wakes at night, which is pretty rare these days, I take her into our bed for a feed and we both drift back off to sleep. Happens rarely enough not to be habit forming so far! Hope u have a better night tonight x

Have no proper advice as have similar issues with 18.5lb DD...but I've found it easier on my poor arms to bounce on a birthing ball rather than rock. Now have thighs of steel too!

If we've been at it for a while then a ring sling takes her weight a bit more as well. Bouncing away in front of a muted, subtitled TV stops me from going a bit mad too, I get cabin fever if I'm trying to get her to sleep for ages upstairs.

I'll leave the actual, proper long-term advice to others

My 5 month dd is always fed to sleep but horror of horrors it wouldn't work last month. I just kept at it and can report were happily feeding to sleep again. Must just have been a weird time or something for her! I say keep at it!x