Starting to hate breast-feeding. Please help me through this one way or another!

[ThreeWheelsOnMySleigh]

DD is almost a year old and has always fed to sleep. This has never been a problem, but I have recently started to try to help her settle to sleep on her own as I would like dh to be able to put her to bed. It just feels like the right time to do this.

For the past 3 weeks or so I have been trying the 'Pantley pull-off' and at first we seemed to be having some success - DD suddenly cut her feeds down from 30 mins to 10-15 mins and would quite happily come off the breast and drop off before going into her cot. Fast-forward 3 weeks, however, and I am really starting to lose it. DD is now waking any time between 3 and 5 am for a feed - as she has always done - but within a couple of minutes of going back into her cot (alseep) she is wide awake again! Because she is not hungry, she will not feed back to sleep, although she is obviously still tired as she will constantly yawn and bury her head into my shoulder. She seems to be actively resisting sleep and will then be awake for up to 3 hours before going back to bed and making up the time she has lost by waking so early ( she has always needed 11 hours, and will go back to bed until she has had this amount of sleep). It is as though there is a window of opportunity for her to go to sleep, and if that is missed she has to go through the whole cycle of being awake for hours before she can go back to sleep again, even if she is really tired.

The first couple of times this happened, I brought DD downstairs until she was ready to go back to bed, but after three or four times I decided that I would try to make this waking time as boring as possible so that she did not confuse these night-wakings with morning times. I have been keeping her on my lap in her room with all the lights off and not speaking to her, just making 'shushing' sounds and trying to help her back to sleep. After a while I lie her in her cot to let her have a go at going back to sleep on her own. If I make the slightest sound, she is up on her feet and I have to start the whole process again. If dh tries to settle her, she screams hysterically until I take her back from him.

In the last 2 weeks, dd has gone to sleep on her own exactly twice, and I am really starting to suffer from the lack of sleep - I just feel as though I have created a rod for my own back and I have no idea how to get out of this situation. We seem to be making no progress at all, I just feel as though every time we take a step forward we then take two back! This morning felt like the final straw - dd woke at 5, back into cot and wide awake again by 530 and is still awake at 1140am. She was about to nap at 9ish, when the phone rang just as she was closing her eyes and that was the end of that! DD just cannot go to sleep on her own, and I am beginning to resent having to feed her, which then makes me hate myself for resenting it, and son and so on...

I would really appreciate any advice or input from anyone who has been in this situation or is dealing with similar at the moment. I have loved breastfeeding, and really didn't want it to end like this but I don't see how I can keep doing it without continuing the sleep association for dd and making us both miserable.

Apologies for the rambling nature of this post, and terrible spelling etc. Am not at my best after just 4 hours sleep! Thanks in advance if you've managed to wade through it all!

Aw, poor you, been there....

Suggest you try putting her to bed later so that she goes through until later... Make it gradual, 15 or 30 min later each night.

Got my DD (ultimate boob monster) to stop bf by me staying away for a night and leaving DH to it.. He kept her up a bit later and just gave her a dummy when she woke up. No screaming, nothing... Admittedly she has become more addicted to her dummy since I stopped bf...

Thanks mamijacacalys. Unfortunately dd would never contemplate a dummy, although I have tried. She has, from very early on, always needed 11 hours nighttime sleep. If I put her to bed later, she will do the nighttime waking later, then still go back to bed to make up the 11 hours, if you see what I mean. She then misses out on her nap as she has slept too late, and the whole thing goes tits up!

Forgot to add - normal routine =

bed between 7 and 8. Up 11 hours later, with one night feed.

Nap for 2 hours after 3 - 3 and a half hours awake.

That's it til bedtime. If she sleeps any later than 230 - 3ish she won't go to bed til later than usual.

I'm not sure if I can help but your routine sounds similar to ours and dd is similar age so maybe!

I was determined (after a nightmare with dd1) not to feed dd2 to sleep. You can't help it though can you? Anyway, what I have done is encourage her to go to sleep IN her cot from about 6 months. Might be worth a go. Our routine is slightly different now but we used to:

6pm in bath. 6.15pm in pyjamas. Boob one. Into sleeping bag, mostly to rouse her a bit. Boob two. Usually either asleep or sleepy. Say something like, ok time for M to go to bed now. Carry, not daintily iykwim, into her room and plonk into cot. Say good night and leave. In the early days she would cry every time and I'd go back in and sit by her cot rubbing her back/head/hand until she went off then crept away. Occasionally (like once every two weeks) she'd go off on her own. When she woke in the night I'd give her a bit, unless she was crying rather than shouting, then back in and stroke - no picking up or talking. Gradually the times I would have to go back in decreased until 6 out of 7 nights she'd go off by herself.

I was having different probs and at the sugestion of someone on here I changed the routine to help DH become involved. Now we do boobs downstairs before bath then it's stories then into cot, wide awake! We're going through a blip (I hope!) of her standing up after I've left and screaming blue murder but that's another story.

Hopefully there'll be something useful in there!

CTTT

Thanks CTTT, glad its not just me!

At bedtime, does your DH take her upstairs when you have fed her, or do you do it? Am wondering whether dd would be better if there's no chance of any more feeding IYSWIM?

Bit of both although she prefers it to be me! She does 'ask' for more boobs sometimes when we get into her bedroom but I have been ignoring her requests and distracting her with stories. I did start off taking her beaker with some water in with us at story time but she acted like I was trying to poison her!

I think it's probably worth you experimenting with new routines to find one that might work. M will happily go to bed for someone else if I am not in the house. If she knows I am downstairs she screams for me, which I find impossible to ignore and always end up interfering.

Good luck with anything new you try!