Breastfeeding is to blame.

[alice93]

I'm putting the thread here because a) I'm not sure if there is a bedtime/sleeping thread and b) it's heavenly down to breastfeeding.

Anyway, my very almost 6 month old is still not sleeping in his own cot (which is in our room). I have to feed him to sleep, and I'll usually leave him in my bed and sometimes before I go to bed I'll manage to move him into his bed, but if he wakes he'll have to come back into ours. This is just getting more and more annoying. We want our own bed with no baby in it! If I do manage to put him in his own bed then he'll most likely wake around 3/4am which he won't do if he stays in our bed.

I've tried doing a nice routine: bath, feed, books, songs, bed with toys. But it doesn't work. He has on several occasions gone to bed happy, played with toys and fallen asleep. But this is quite rare.

So if I put him in his cot, and leave the room, he'll start to cry. I've tried giving him space, coming back 15 mins late - to a little boy with tears down his face and most likely a sore throat from all that wailing. I try to calm him down without feeding him but it doesn't work. So eventually I give in and breastfeed him to sleep.

For naps, his is breastfed and I usually stay with him for them as if he wakes he'll refuse to go back to sleep and then he'll only have had half a nap.

We've started to introduce food, mainly purée stuff. But not much as the poor little boy is having problem with bowel movements - which only adds to the bedtime woes. He still refuses a bottle.

How do you recommend I solve these problems? Basically I love breastfeeding but it's time to slow down on it, especially as my evenings our spoilt by his need for boobies.

Help would be greatly appreciated!!

There is a section for sleep threads, it's under the Being a Parent topic. You could try posting again there.

As for the sleep issues, it's not abnormal for 5 to 6 month old baby to still need feeds in the night. You don't mention how often he wakes for feeds?

I would say that imo leaving him to cry for 15 minutes is too long. He won't understand at this age what's going on and he'll just be distressed. In your position, I would decide what you want to do about bedtimes and then stick to it. So, it might be deciding to always putting him down in the cot awake after the final breastfeed of the evening, not in your bed. If he doesn't settle in the cot, then stay next to him until he does fall asleep. If he doesn't settle with you next to him, pick him up and calm him down, and then try again. Keep doing this every night and he will get better at settling in the cot. You could take the same approach for night wakings if you think he definitely doesn't need a feed (eg it's been less than 3 hours since he last was fed).

I don't think breastfeeding or not is the issue - the issue is that you want him to be able to go to sleep independently. There are some babies out there that do this easily, but certainly for both mine they had to be encouraged. We did something called gradual withdrawal, which involved doing the bedtime routine, finishing up with bf, and then putting the baby in the cot awake.

However, either me or DH then sat beside the cot, hand on the baby if that seemed to be a comfort, until they feel asleep. For both of them this took quite a long time - over an hour the first night and quite a lot of that time was spent crying. However, we found it bearable because we knew that we were there as comfort and so the crying was down to frustration/annoyance rather than feeling abandoned. Then over time you reduce any physical contact, move further away from the cot each night etc.

We certainly found that night wakings decreased a lot once DC were going to sleep in their cot rather than being put down already asleep. However if you expect sleeping through at 6mo I don't think that's particularly realistic - mine started sleeping through fairly reliably at about 8m (DD) and 10m (DS) which I think is far more typical.

I also think that whatever happens you need to reassess leaving him in your bed alone unless it has high sides - he will be starting to roll before long and it won't be safe.

Sorry to say that breastfeeding probably isn't the issue. My dd is 12 months old and still wakes for a bottle in the night!! She struggles to fall asleep unless she is sucking a bottle and then wants that if she wakes in the night.... Unfortunately if you slow down on the breastfeeding you are probably just swapping the problem for a bottle (although someone else can give a bottle which might be helpful).

Some good suggestions already.

None of what you describe is in any way unusual or abnormal for a baby of this age, however he is fed (I don't see the relevance of breastfeeding here) ...but the point is that you would like things to change.

15 mins crying is far too long - you clearly understand this, and recognise how distressing it is for him.

Seems to me it would be useful to change things one at a time.

You could start with the evening settling. He's not safe left alone in an adult bed, so he will need to stay asleep in his own cot. The gradual withdrawal method is worth doing. You need to be consistent about it. Stick to the routine you have, but don't put toys for him to play with in the cot (he should be relaxed and un-stimulated. Toys in the cot are not safe if he is left alone with them, though a small snuggly thing is fine).

Trying to sort out evening settling and sleeping through and staying in the cot is not going to work!

Good luck.

I 'trained' my son to self settle at around 4/5 months old. I found the gradual withdrawal worked and didn't take too long. Put down in cot awake and ssssh pat for however long it takes. Every time he stirred at nap time I would pat to get him back to sleep. Slowly pat less, just a hand, nothing at all. It did work eventually.

My bottle fed baby still needed feeding through the night until around 5 months so I wouldn't blame breast feeding. It's just comfort and mammy cuddles he wants.

Have you tried the other caregiver (daddy?) going in to settle him after you've left? He won't associate him with milk, or be able to smell your milk.

Not sure how you feel about them but If its the suckling for comfort getting him off to sleep have you considered a dummy just for bed?

By 6 months it shouldn't cause nipple / teat confusion.

You can gradually wean him off that whenever you want to but might find he does it himself anyway after a few months.

Also with dd we have a small taggie that I slept with for a few nights to get my scent on. She always snuggles that while falling asleep now

He doesn't know how to settle himself to sleep without feeding (bottle fed babies do this too) so you need to work on that. Gradual withdrawal with take time but should work. Up until now you've shown him that being fed to sleep his how he gets to sleep, but suddenly you want him to do something else and he doesn't know how to, hence the crying.

Make his cot a nice place to be - spend time in his room and his cot during the day so he's comfortable with the surroundings.

As much as I hate/hated dummies, I was in your situation with my eldest at the same age-only breastfed or rocked to sleep. At 7 months I gave him a dummy and he went straight to sleep on his own, and was old enough at that stage to put it back in if it fell out.

I fed DC1 to sleep til he was about this age, then did some gentle sleep training (rocking/patting to sleep instead of feeding) to get him self-settling.

With DC2 I never got into the habit of feeding to sleep, but I do pat and soothe her in her cot sometimes and she has a dummy.

I don't think this is necessarily a breastfeeding problem either - you can swap one sleep prop (breast) for another and reduce gently, but you don't have to just go cold turkey and leave him to cry if you feel this isn't right.

I could have written your post! So you're not alone, my solution was I bf DS to sleep and lay him down in his cot, if he woke we would do controlled crying, this lasted 2 days and he now no longer wakes when I lay him down. It's the same during the night, he wakes, I feed hen when he's finished I put him down shushing and patting if necessary it's hard and similar to having a newborn but worth it!
Stay strong!

Thank you to all the replies! It's given me extra motivation for tonight.

I wish he took a dummy but he refuses them, I'm tempted to try the 6+m size but at £6 a dummy (we're abroad) it's debatable..

My partner sometimes goes to him if he wakes at night, it doesn't work at all. Sometimes it's as if he gets more angry. I wish it was mummy cuddles he were after but he is purely boob focused - so he's not interested in cuddles unless there is a boob involved.

Sleepwise, he generally doesn't wake during the night at all if he is in our bed, occasionally at 9/10pm but that's it.

A few more questions: if I do the feeding at the last part of the routine how do I make sure he doesn't fall asleep when I put him to bed? Should I slip my finger in to stop the feed?

Also, we move around a lot. We're students so time is spent between uni, my parents, and my partners partners (who live abroad - where we are now for the next 2 months). Basically, he's never in the same room for long, before we up it and go somewhere else for a bit. Is this likely to be a contributing factor? (Not that I can do anything about it..)

The moving around could be a factor, but that's where always putting him in the cot could help with consistency.

With the feeding to sleep, if he's asleep and no longer feeding then yes you could gently detach him and then put him down.

I just thought I'd let you all know - last night we did the stories, the feed, he woke as he was out into bed, but I held his hand as he cried a bit, I sang songs, and eventually he fell asleep!! He ended up back in our bed at 3am as I was too tired to stay awake for the whole of his feed. But such a big improvement! Got to keep it up now & thank you again for all the help