feeling bit trapped by bf now 15m in.

[feekerry]

rant warning!!
met a friend yesterday. her baby is 7 weeks old and ff since birth. she and her dh have started doing things together alone one.evening a week whilst a gp looks after her dd for a few hours. my dd is 15m old. ebf. and to this day me.and dh have never had an evening out.together since she was born as its all about boob for her.come 7pm.
my other friend ds has stayed at gp house an evening a week.every few.weeks since 9m whilst her and her dh attend weddings etc and nights away.
i have done every single.night since dd was born. she will not allow dh to see to her or put her to bed. he tries nearly every night but she howls and howls if its not me and boob. she only every buckles for a min or so max so its not hunger or thirst its just a comfort thing. she isn't really like this in the day and i can be away from her all day no issue.
how have i ended up in this disaster.

suckles not buckles lol!!
also add its not so much the putting to bed its when she wakes up thru the night she will.not allow anyone else to see to her

We're in a similar sitch with dd 17mo. Just the one bedtime feed now.

When we can get 3-4 nights in a row when DH will be home from work early enough, he's going to put her to bed whilst I go out or something.

She's more chatty and alert during these feeds these days so it's not like she feeds to sleep. So i might also try a story during bf and gradually do more story and no bf because I can't see DH getting home early any time soon. Dreading it though tbh and up until recently felt teary at the thought of stopping but am now ready. She's dropped the other feeds with no probs so who knows, maybe this last one would be the same???

Good luck though, I totally get where you're coming from!

have you tried expressing and letting your dh give her the bottle for one feed? it'll take a while for her to get used to it, but then she will see him as a source of comfort. He could wear something that smells of you perhaps, or with your milk on. I know how you feel, my dd never settled for my dp, she was ebf and we tried the expressed bottle but my dp couldn't hack it. if he had perservered i reckon it would have worked.

dd doesn't feed in the day at all anymore and i don't think i have much milk now as don't hear her swallowing at night.
just look at my friends and think god how did i end up in this situation where i haven't been out in nearly 2years!!!

pod, dd has never had a bottle but guzzles cows milk from a cup no problem at all. don't think i could express anything anymore.
he can actually put her to bed okay if i am working late but its when she wakes up thru the night that she will not accept anyone else

Maybe you could have DH do some Kangaroo care with her around the time you put her down in a darkened room and express so he can feed her, then maybe when you handle her she may not want to feed.

Or keep doing the kangaroo care, she may get used to it and make it more easier for DH to put her to bed then.

Just a suggestion :) Good luck.

i am going out next month and planning to stay at a friends so dd and dh will just have to make it work.
suppose all he can do is cuddle and reassure if she screams all night.
he is not looking forward to it

what is kangaroo care????

15 month old DD and we are in exactly the same position.....no advice really but you're not alone lol
We don't even get 3 hours straight in the evenings!

Surely this isn't a ff or bf debate though? It's just when you choose to allow feeds.

Myself , and others I know have bf until toddlers and have the freedom to do thing as and when as there are 24 hr s in a day.

Sorry but cant you just offer a feed at say 6pm, leave at grandparents/ with babysitter and they sort bed? Or just offer milk in a cup?

Pretty sure kangaroo care is when you stuff them up your top naked so they can do skin to skin all tucked up. Like a baby kangaroo in a pouch.

no totally not a debate between the two just so happens both of the examples i gave of my friends happen to be ff.
i tried to leave her few months back and got called home as she was still howling after 2.5 hours.
i feel i have got myself into this situation and feel trapped by it now. of course this could have still arisen if i bottle fed but at least someone else can give a bottle

Reading this as I bf 14mo ds to sleep! Dd self-weaned (with a little encouragement from me) at 13mo. I am totally ready to stop bf but havent got the energy to deal with bedtime or night wakings any other way...

I do get out in the evening though as once asleep he is normally fine til at least 10 so I can go out for a few hrs once he's down. Can you not do this? move bedtime maybe if you need to?

I have a friends wedding in Aug and really dont want to miss dinner to go and feed ds so if no progress by July I'm going to have to just get tough, refuse to offer bf and just work out how to help him settle himself to sleep...

It's an option (you don't have to follow it) but we night weaned at 13 months. We followed Dr Jay Gordon's method see here This was the start of growing a relationship for DP and DD.

Not that they didn't have a good one but I think if you breastfeeding past a certain age in to toddler hood then they are more attached to mum than dad.

The night weaning was one of several things we did.

Once we did night weaned, dd continued to nurse as and when during the day.

I continued to do bedtime but changed small things, for example, her bedtime breastmilk i started giving to her downstairs on the sofa, then DP would take her to bed.

It was gradual simple changes to her bedtime pattern involving DP every step of the way. I'd always go in to her if she genuinely sounded distressed with me not being there. Eventually she started to trust DP to see to her needs, ie offering water, a cuddle, reading a million stories etc.

In fairness it was a couple of nights out id gone to a sports class and DP had to cope and he did and so did she. She got used to it and now it's an ongoing thing that I or DP says to her to explain where I am "mummy going/gone gym" and at 21 months old, she understands that dad will look after her.

We're still feeding btw. Night weaning didn't reduce the day time feeds but it had a positive affect on her eating more solids and have set (ish) times for breastfeeds.

Sorry for waffling hope this helps

fad that's really helpful thanks.
i am committed to staying at a friends next month so they will just have to cope. hopefully that might be the start of me getting some.life back.
really like the idea of evening bf on the sofa before going into dd room

Just start with little tweaks to their 'normal' routine.

Also don't under estimate how much they understand when you tell them where you are or what's happening at bed time tonight eg say over dinner: daddy is going to put you to bed tonight sweetheart, are you both going to read Gruffalo?

Even now we do this, pre warning her what's happening next so there are no surprises. Tonight I've left her to it with DP but still said to her I'd come back up if she wanted me, her response was "night-night-mummy" redundant

Never had a problem, my bottle refusing, BF way way into school DD2 would take yoghurt and juice of DH and let me go swimming in an evening once a week from about 8 months.

But, she was always fed to sleep down stairs with me watching the TV (subtitles or she turned to watch) and DH always often took her off my knee and put her in her cot. He always did when she got to being a toddler as I put my knee out carrying her up stairs.

I think a big difference with settling for bed is whether they are fed to sleep.

Feeding downstairs at say 7pm, then up for quick bath, stories and bed at 7.30, is easier than bath, stories, feed, bed. As they learn to assoiciate bed with feed. If you can get them think of stories and bedtime song instead for example it makes it much easier for others to take over if needed

Yes,never under estimate how much they understand.

Also never under estimate the power of boredom.

Overtired, stroppy, don't want to play along DDs who are plonked on a bean bag while you watch question time with subtitles and decline to acknowledge their existence, soon decide they are tired and that beds OK. Way more effective than leaving them scream.

We made some changes around this age (mainly stopping the feeding to sleep) after an awful experience of the MIL trying (and unfortunately failing) to put DD to bed when we went out for an evening past her bedtime. It was our first night out where we hadn't got home in time for bed as we went to the theatre, prior to that we'd only ever done an early dinner and put her to bed later. That whole week was hell, she was so unsettled, waking every 45mins-1hr the first night, every 2hrs the next night, clingy during the day, it took 5 days for her to go back to normal. Unfortunately I was also pregnant and my supply had already dropped despite being only a few weeks gone so feeding to sleep wasn't working anymore as there wasn't enough milk.
Now she's not feeding to sleep anymore, she's better with going to sleep with DH. She used to do it fine and then stopped a month before our theatre night out (bloody typical!).
But some nights she still refuses to go to bed with him, and when she's ill, it's still mummy she wants.
I know what you're going through, she's 17 months and I'm worried now about can I cope with going continuously into feeding a newborn again as I know how intensive that is.
How I got her off feeding to sleep, I told her that I was going to count to 10 and then after that milkies goes night nights. Sometimes she still doesn't like it, mainly if she's overtired, but she accepts it now. I also do it during the night if she wakes and wants a feed but since doing this, her night wakings have all but stopped, it's just the odd night now where she might wake up once whereas before it was 2/3 times with hardly any exceptions.

really valid points ladies. thanks.
she doesn't really feed to sleep anymore at bedtime. the problem we have is when she wakes. she is usually asleep by 7.30 but then wakes for the first time between 10 and 11 ish and thats when we have the issue. also if i don't put her to bed then she tends to wake between 9-10.

Same here, my little boy is 16 months and still feeds to sleep then about every 3 hrs during the evening and night. I look like shit! Me and my husband have no social life at all, Ben out once in past 3 yrs as we have 3 yr old as well. No one around to babysit anyway. You are not alone.