To break 'nurse to sleep' association in almost 1 year old?

[ruruuu99]

Hi all,

I'm totally new to mumsnet and this is my first thread, not really sure if I've selected the correct category but here it goes!

I have a healthy, happy almost 1 year old and everything is going well - except the way in which she transitions to sleep.

She has a very strong 'nurse to sleep' association and has to be BF right before sleep, including daytime naps. At one point she did manage to fall asleep whilst being rocked, but she had to have a milk feed directly prior to that. As of recently, she wants to fall asleep whilst nursing which is how she was as a newborn, so not sure if this is some sort of regression?

I have tried to hold back pre-nap BFs on a few occasions, but she would always thrash about in my arms and cry - so she doesn't even want to be cuddled/rocked to sleep if she hasn't had a milk feed. I can tell she's not hungry as she's only using me as a pacifier (note: she's never had a dummy and don't think she'd even take one now as she's refusing bottles as well)

My question is - has anyone managed to successfully break the habit of nursing to sleep? If so, how did you go about it? I do acknowledge the fact that up until now I've been taking the path of least resistance as this is what she's been used to from birth, but at the same time I'd like to wean her off BFing and gradually reduce that reliance on using the boob as a crutch to fall asleep.

I don't want to just leave her to cry moving forward as it breaks my heart, with that being said we have done CC a few times and she did go to sleep after crying for around 5 mins, but it hasn't worked every single time and on those disastrous occasions she did become hysterical so I caved in and BFd her. Essentially I'd be interested in hearing about more gentle methods where she can peacefully fall asleep.

She eats 3 meals a day + snacks, some days she eats a lot and other days not so much due to teething, etc. Also she generally can fall asleep in the buggy but has been fighting her naps in there as of recently.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thank you :)

It doesn't sound like you don't fully understand what controlled crying is. Have you read the Ferber book about sleep training?

It takes hours to do controlled crying, not five minutes.

I did it with one of my DC and continued to breastfeed during the day.

I know it's hard to hear them cry but you have to be consistent and determined!

And OP - caving in is just what you're not meant to do when you're sleep training.
How many times a night does your DD wake up?

Falling asleep in the buggy is not recommended.
All sleeps and naps need to be in the cot.
I'm assuming she's in her own room now. Have you got blackout curtains?

This is a good thread with lots of advice:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/sleep/4924276-please-tell-me-im-not-terrible-to-think-about-controller-crying

Hello, thanks for your replies and for sharing that thread - I will check it out.

Upon reflection I think CC was a poor choice of wording, my bad. What I meant to say is that we attempted to do some sort of sleep training but due to the lack of consistency it hasn't yielded any results. Consistency really is key but I just need to gather up some mental strength first so that I can fully go through with it!

She has been in her own room since she turned 10 months and on average wakes up once/twice a night - realistically speaking, she only really wakes up once in the night (at around 11pm-12am) and then wakes up very early in the morning (between 4am-5.30am), then goes back to sleep until after 7am.

Interesting to hear that buggy naps are not recommended, is there a particular reason for this? She seems to be dropping her afternoon nap anyway (not sure if she's too young for this), so as of recently she has only been having 1 long morning nap in the cot. We don't have blackout curtains but she seems to sleep fine even if the natural light is quite dim in the room. Perhaps I should look into them!

I would say that she's too young to drop her afternoon nap. Does she sleep for long in the morning? Maybe wake her up after half an hour and see how you go.

The only reason buggy naps aren't recommended is because it's better for babies to associate lying in their cots for going to sleep, no matter what time of day or night it is.

I fed my first baby to sleep for ages, and it was a mistake! As she got older it became harder and harder to get her to sleep, till I was tearing my hair out.
I always put the subsequent three babies down in the cot awake, so they learned to self-soothe.

My kids are much older now, so my experience may be well out of date.

When they were little all the info said you mustn't feed to sleep, etc.

Except I went back to work FT when they were less than 6 months (we had bills to pay!). And it rapidly became apparent that the best solution was getting everyone back to bed quickest. And feeding to sleep did that the best.

(We did try all manner of bottles/putting down drowsy but awake. It was just unnecessarily stressful and ineffective)

Eventually feeding to sleep stopped working, and then they'd go to bed with music etc, singing/talking to themselves till they dropped off.

I would say do whatever is easiest. Because it'll change anyway. Don't make things harder for yourself than it needs to be.

Ha! Reading @TheShellBeach's posts is clear that all babies are different.

(Certainly mine were. We gave the second a dummy. It was amazing)

Lots of different ways but if it's not a problem for you it's not really a problem. If it is a problem then totally understand trying to find other ways. For us feeding to sleep is the quickest, calmest and most reliable way, so as long as that works I'll be grateful.

My youngest has just turned one and feeds to sleep, and has one nap. Since dropping her second nap bedtimes have been a lot easier.

My eldest breastfed until 18 months, and mostly fed to sleep. I found that once her understanding and communication developed bedtime shifted a bit and she would fall asleep listening to a story or similar. Funnily enough she had all of her daytime naps in the pushchair in the kitchen as it was where she was happiest sleeping. Don't think we've done any long term damage. She's nearly 4 now and is a good sleeper.