Stopping feeding to sleep

[beijingaling]

I've posted this before in sleep but responses were either "she's tiny, it's normal, just put up with it' or 'my dc is the same' and I really need more practical advice. Any books, suggestions or ideas welcome.

I'm at the end of my rope with feeding dd to sleep. Shes 11w ish, DH travels for work so he can't help in the week and on weekends DD just cries for me and won't settle with him. I'm doing all the harder care (ie settling, soothing, sleeping, night wakings) which I'm finding exhausting and starting to resent DH for as I just don't ever get a break. However, DH is not my focus here.

I don't enjoy feeding to sleep, I don't enjoy the sensation, I'm not willing to do it for months and want to deal with it now. It will send me to formula if I cant fix this and I enjoy bfing so I don't want to do that.

DD is really learning to nap and sleep at the moment. She isn't one of those babies that just drops off. Right now she will only feed to sleep or comfort suck to sleep. Sometimes I can get her to suck for 30 seconds then swap to a dummy but its obvious that the feeding is her major sleep cue.

How do I teach her a new sleep cue? Any practical ideas?

She won't always take a dummy.

Elizabeth Pantley's book could be helpful. 'The No Cry Sleep Solution'. I found it very helpful. She outlines a technique for stopping sucking to sleep. Look up 'Pantley Pull-off' on here or on Google.

I still feed my ds2 to sleep and he's 6 1/2 months.

I don't mind it tbh but even I don't want to be doing it forever.

So,

I've got one of these BT 150 baby monitors that play lullabies. I started with just putting the lullabies on as I was feeding to sleep and patting his bum at the same time. I do this every time he wakes up in the night too.

I figure he's then associating 3 things with sleep, feeding, patting and music. I did this for about a week. Deciding just a couple of days ago that I'm no longer going to feed him back to sleep if he wakes up before 10pm and after midnight. So starting with his 8pm wake up (after going to bed at 6.30pm) instead of feeding him back to sleep like I normally would, I put the lullabies on and patted his bum while he was in the cot. (he sleeps on tummy). Two nights of this and last night he slept through his usual 8pm wake up call until 11.40pm where I fed him.

If he sleeps through his 8pm wake up again tonight then tomorrow night I'm gonna start doing the same with the other feeds one by one.

Still gotta sort out daytime naps though. He falls asleep fine when out and a out in pram so it might just be a case of rocking him until very nearly asleep and putting him down and down a bit early every few days until he is going down awake and happy to settle himself to sleep.

Hi,

I'm in the same sort of position as you and am trying to do the same thing as I think it's important for my DD to learn to self settle (she's 4 months).

So what I've been doing is focusing on the last feed before bed, I'd previously feed her to sleep upstairs, with a nightlight on. Now I give her the last feed downstairs and I've gradually added in another activity. At the moment it's a nappy change and then I take her upstairs to the dimly lit room and put her in her sleeping bag and straight in the cot. I'm amazed at how well it works, she turns her head to the side and falls straight asleep! I want to aim to add a bedtime story in so that's her cue.

During the night, I try and settle her without a feed (ie just leaving her to winge NOT cry) and see if she'll settle herself which sometimes she does. If she doesn't then I'll feed.

I'm now going to try and crack the naps, generally I'm using a dummy and rocking her in the pram and so need to get a new set of 'cues' here as I want to get rid of both!

good luck - you don't have to put up with it if you don't want to.

Thank you all for posting. I've just got and read The No Cry Sleep Solution and plan to start using her in the next couple of days. Both your cues fishmother and 4fox are really useful! I'll have a good think and get cracking on the change.

Whats DD sleeping in at the moment? We decided to switch to a formula feed for the before bedtime feed when our DS was about 4 months old - it filled him up more and made him sleep longer. My DH would give him the bottle (obviously not an option for you) then burp him and put him into his crib which was on rockers. He'd then lie in bed and rock the crib till DS fell asleep. During the night I would breast feed DS but then return him to crib and DH would rock him to sleep.
You could try a rocking crib, and at weekends your DH could get involved with feeds and rocking to give you a break.

I tried the no-cry sleep solution but found it led to a lot of crying (for us, might work for you though). I myself couldn't break the feeding to sleep habit. The only thing that worked in the end for us was dh putting him to bed every evening for about 2-3 weeks - would it be possible to put some time aside when your dh can take a/l or do you have someone else who might be able to help? He did scream at first and took much longer to go to sleep the first few times, but it really broke the association between feeding and sleeping and then we were able to start taking turns. I think it is something that is much harder for you to do than anyone else as you smell of milk and will be associated with milk.