12 mth old returned to feeding to sleep

[melonribena]

My almost 12 mth old ds has had a rocky road with bf. He had a ptt snipped twice and still struggles with hs latch due to a lip tie that we can't find anyone to snip.

Anyway! He fed constantly for the first two months of his life then moved to cluster feeding at night. He fed to sleep every nap and bedtime until suddenly at 5 mths old he decided he'd grown out of it and settled happily in his cot with me holding his hands.

This was great and worked well until last wk he started screaming when he went near his cot and wants to comfort suck and feed to sleep again.

I'd rather not get back into this but am a loss because currently it's the only thing that gets him to sleep.

Has anyone else been through anything similar or can suggest anything?!!

Anyone?

DS1 was similar - he fed to sleep for the first few months. Then around 5/6 months that stopped working at bedtime (although he continued to feed to sleep for naps for a lot longer), and we eventually realised if we put him in his cot with his muslin, he would just suck his thumb and go to sleep. Then around 11/12 months it stopped working. On days where he was particularly tired, he would feed to sleep. On days where he was less tired, DH and I would take it in turns to walk him round, rock him etc. until he eventually fell asleep - or was ready to feed to sleep. The feeding straight to sleep tended to be on days where he only had one nap, and it taking hours tended to be the days where he'd had two. He did eventually return to not feeding to sleep. I think a contributing factor was him properly dropping down to only having one (but longer) nap every day, although there was also an odd environmental thing in our case that we just needed to tweak (he didn't want to be left in his cot if we closed the bedroom door, but if we left it open, he was happy and would go to sleep). I doubt the exact same things will work for you, but hopefully if you would prefer not to feed to sleep, it will similarly resolve with some time.

Thanks RedKites, it's good to know its not just us! Ds is exactly the same as yours was. I did wonder if his room was too dark, I will try more light and see if that helps!