help with breastfeeding/comfort nursing

[Freddie15VES]

hey all,

firstly i so enjoy breastfeeding its lovely and we’ve had a fairly easy journey really

she’s never taken a dummy, i have tried as she did struggle with trapped wind when she was very young and did comfort nurse a lot

but now she’s 10 months she still will not have anything other than boob to get her back to sleep. she eats well in the day, solids and breast milk and breast milk from a bottle if we’re apart and will happily be rocked to sleep by who ever has her whilst i work

the struggle i’m having is night time, she will not be comforted by anyone or anything else but a boob! i have tried and tried to rock her, pat her, shush her etc but she just gets louder and louder and i give in and give her a boob so she doesn’t wake the entire house up!

but she just sucks a couple of times then shes back off. but if i dare to leave the room im getting approx 10 mins downstairs before she’s rooting around for me and crying

how do i stop this? i want to continue breastfeeding but i want her to learn to self soothe more!

Have you tried someone else putting her to bed and then dealing with night wake ups. If she knows you’re around she’ll want you. If she accepts you’re not there, she may accept no boob. Mine were like that - nightmare if I was around, great if I wasn’t.

Is there someone else (dad?) that can settle her at night? She may cry and fight it to start with as she's used to being fed but it's not the same as cry it out as she's being comforted and cared for appropriately so will eventually learn to settle with them

@YellowDiamondsInTheSky we are trying this out at the weekend, our eldest is at nanny and grandads so i’m going to go and do some late night xmas shopping and leave her with dad

@Wishiwasatailor he does try his best but her crying just gets so loud it sometimes wakes up our son which is difficult because he’s much harder to get back to sleep!

Have you read the No Cry Sleep Solution?

If you're working in the day though it might not be the BFing that's the issue she might need some more contact time with you. I'm not saying that to shame you just that it might be useful to think of a skin to skin activity before bed like maybe taking a bath together?