How can I break my baby's attachment to me without breaking his heart?

[popnmum]

Does anyone have any suggestions or been in the same situation.

My 11 month old is a rubbish sleeper, never slept through once, still getting up 2-4 times a night. He can do better than this, as he has on the very odd occasion been up just the once. At his very worst he was up every hour! I have tried everything and it all ends in tears and I cant leave him crying for long as it is too hard.
:(

Please dont suggest co sleeping, we did this briefly around 3-4 months when he was waking every hour and we had to end it as he rolling everywhere and it was very unsafe. He is a very active baby and needs to be in his cot for his own safety.

He is also a rubbish eater. Bf and only started fairly recently taking bottle, now that he is of the age he is not meant to have them, typical! He still doesn't take a complete feed though, when he has a bottle of formula he has what a 1 month old has.

Weaning has gone all wrong, he doesn't eat enough, throws his food, is very picky. We started just at 6 months and he only really started eating a month later and then he refused all spoons so it is finger food only (blw style so I eat what he's having and he eats/plays with the food).

I dont think he has ever eaten enough or had enough of a bottle feed to feel a full satisfied tummy which brings me back to my original problem ...........he is still heavily attached to bf. Up until 5 months he fed every hour and was up many times at night so it was pretty much round the clock feeding. I tried everything to stretch out feeds but nothing worked. I was told it would pass as he was so little but it hasn't really. He now feeds every 2-3 hours (4-5 at a push if I leave him with food and formula) but he is 11 months, nearly a year old!!

Anyway basically I have figured out that I am his attachment object, I have tried getting him attached to toys, blankets, bottles, dummy etc but he is not interested he just wants me for comfort day and night. We have no family around so he has never been looked after by anyone else besides me and DH and DH is very good with him and takes him out for half days etc when he can (this had only been in the last 2 months). Just recently DH has also done 2 successful morning naps. If he tries to help at night DS screams the place down. We will keep on working at DH doing naps and hopefully this will help the night sleeping.

Fortunately I will be going back to work part time next month!! We have arranged it so DH can care for DS at home, so he will be able to become more involved with naps and feeding so I really hope if will get better. I cant wait as I am desperate to get back to work, which makes me sad as so many mums I talk to go on about how they dont want to go back to work and here I am desperate to! :(

Anyway sorry for rambling but I can't share this with anyone, people would think Im a rubbish parent with these problems still going on.

If they haven't improved by Christmas I think I will go away for a few days and leave DH with my mum to look after DS. Do you think this will help to break his attachment from me or do you think it will make things worse? He'll be 18 months then so no longer a baby.

I can understand completely why you are desperate to get back to work.

My DS1 was an awful sleeper. He didn't sleep through the night until he was at least 12 months. I remember crying and crying to my DH about how all I wished for was one full night's sleep (this was around 9 months). I did co-sleep so I am not going to advocate that as you said you weren't interested. Also neither of my DSs were looked after by anyone else.

We did the CIO method at 9 months for about 4 nights and it worked for 2 weeks ... then DS1 got sick/teething and we co-slept again... and suddenly it was 3 more months of no sleep. Then suddenly, overnight it just stopped, he started to sleep through the night. [there is hope for you]. We had from 6 months always put him down in his own bed and then suddenly he slept the whole way through in his own bed!

This may have been the reason we conceived our next baby, so beware!

As far as attachment toys, neither of our DS's have been interested in attachment toys until they were older than 2. So I don't put a lot of stock in them. Actually DS2 is still not interested at 2.5. Perhaps my DS's aren't the norm though.

Ah, popnmum, you sound so nice and so sad at the same time! I'm sorry you're feeling so desperate, there is nothing like sleep deprivation to kill the ability to be positive.

But, I think there is hope. I agree that you probably don't want to break his attachment to you. That attachment is so important in his early years and by that I mean having you as his secure base (not everything else that is classed as 'attachment parenting' iyswim).

What I think you want/need to do is break the night waking. If your DH gets success putting him down for his naps which I might be tempted to try is him doing all the night waking. He can offer a cup of water and some soothing and put him back down in his bed. I know you said he screams blue murder, but this really did work for us with our DD. I had to hide though as I almost couldn't resist just going in and feeding her. And it wasn't so much CC as DH went in with her everytime she cried/woke and helped her settle again. It took 3 nights and then she never woke for a feed again. (apart from now she's a 2.5 yr old and has amazing excuses reasons for waking us up...)

You mentioned a few things about food - you have to remind yourself that their tummies are tiny so a small amount of food can really fill them up. Also, many children don't really take to eating solids properly until their second year. My DD never drank milk at all until she was about 17 months and now she can't get enough. So don't sweat it too much, but do try and have regular meals/snacks and remember it is your job as a parent to provide nutritious food at regular intervals, it is their job whether or not to eat it.

And just to reiterate what Joyful said above - 18 months is still a baby and a lot of kids tend to have a feeding spike around then anyway due to massive developmental leaps. Good luck, you are doing brilliantly. No one would think you are a rubbish parent - you sound totally normal to me.

Goodness you are so not a rubbish parent

You sound brilliant

You realise that this age is the height of separation anxiety for a lot of babies - it's a developmental stage they all go through. It's also probably to do with him getting teeth and being in a bit of discomfort.

I think you have got a lot of pressure on you, perhaps from friends or family but maybe also from yourselves and really, you might feel better if you took a step back and realised that as others have said, babies don't do things by the book. They're random, and once you think you know their plan, they change it all over again.

Your baby sounds like he's doing pretty good. Breaking his attachment to you won't ever happen, but you can encourage his attachment to other things and people, just don't stress it - it's ok if he still wants you at this point. He will eventually change tack, he will grow up, he will stop needing you so fiercely - just try to recognise that just because he does at the moment, it doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong.

It sounds like your anxiety about going back to work, and other things has made you really confused about what you all should be doing right now and worried about why it isn't working out that way.

I'm not sure I can say much in terms of practical advice apart from it just doesn't last forever...by 18 months he will be FAR less dependant on you, other factors will have come into play, and he probably senses your concern and mixed feelings and so on - I wish I could emphasise how much I think you're doing everything RIGHT

Fwiw - Rednellie is spot on - and my own dear DS1 breastfed almost to the exclusion of everything else, till 16 months when one day he just grabbed a bottle, and I stopped. Even then he mostly had bottles of cows milk and refused to eat. He was HUGE and still is very stocky and eats like a horse at 9yo. I don't think it harmed him!

And he slept in my bed till ds2 was born at 4yo and that amount of noise and wriggling kind of persuaded him that his own bed was better

Ds2 still sleeps in my bed whenever possible and is at school now - reception - and sleeps in his own when I am not too tired to move him - it's a transition.
He also BF till he was 4 and a half and hated eating food. He's fine. He does eat now btw.

I'm not saying do the utterly lazy parenting I did, but just another perspective showing it does no harm to let things ride a bit.

Just wondering if he has any tummy issues which makes him a poor sleeper, huge BFer and not interested in solids much. I only suggest it because sounds like DS who had silent reflux (ie heartburn) and fed a lot for comfort. He also was a bit slow on solids and preferred to self feed. Dairy, citric foods and soya were the main triggers.

Poor you, sounds like you really need some decent sleep (and then everything seems much better). It is really difficult to decide how to make changes when you are so tired. I suspect these things will work themselves out, so don't stress and focus on looking after yourself first.

I second what other posters suggest about trying to sort the night waking. I too got myself into a pattern where I was the one who always went into soothe my DS, BF him back to sleep, felt that I HAD to do this, as I couldn't let him cry, etc. I stubbornly clung to this after returning to work until I was almost on my knees from lack of sleep. In fact breaking the pattern wasn't as hard as I'd feared. It involved a little crying (which at the time I thought terrible) but actually each time just as I thought it was unbearable and he'd never settle, he did. We didn't do full CIO, but I think a little crying is inevitable.

What we did was send my husband in to pat him, and place a firm hand on his back till he was lying down in the cot looking pretty sleepy, then leave the room. He'd protest. We'd wait 3-4 minutes then if he was still crying my husband would go back. Generally he'd settle on the 2nd or 3rd attempt. I think doing it with such short intervals meant it took longer (a couple of weeks rather than 3 days) but suddenly it went from 3-4 wakings to sleeping through (well, till 5am). We certainly didn't have any occasions of him crying for hours and if he seemed really upset one of us would stay with him till he fell asleep. However it does take a certain bravery to make these changes - one convinces oneself that the baby will never sleep without the tried and tested methods.

As far as food is concerned, is he gaining weight appropriately? If you don't have any concerns on that score, again I'd suggest not worrying about it and simply giving him what he wants (mainly BF) and offering other foods but not worrying too much. My DS was huge (at 11 months he was 1kg heavier than the top centile, and 99.6th centile for height) but still 95% BF. He could eat (devoured biscuits no problem) but refused to eat any proper food or to drink milk from a bottle. He did drink water from a cup.

I went back to work at 10.5 months and worried how he'd cope without me for 11 hours. Was unable to get him to eat or take formula before going back to work, although I did stretch the daytime feeds so he was used to going 7 hours in the day. He copied just fine. To begin with he fed a lot at night, hence the intensification of my problems with night waking (probably not what you want to hear, but if you are only working part time you may be able to tank him up more in the day), then he started eating yoghurt and drinking milk at nursery. He still doesn't eat much at 19 months (big breakfast plus picks at one other meal, down to 1 BF) but they are very adaptable and if you are not there will start to look for alternatives. Look at it this way - when you are around, what he wants is vintage top quality stuff.

As far as comfort toys are concerned, my DS seemed uninterested till 17 months old. Like you say, his only attachment object was me, he stopped being willing to sleep on my husband at 5 months. Then - bang - he was suddenly interested in soft toys. Typically this coincided with us going on holiday and because he'd shown no interest before, I didn't bother bringing any. He then refused to sleep at all and we had a mad panic search for a shop selling a soft toy. It also becomes a lot easier as they get older and more verbal. As soon as the interest in the soft toy developed we became able to manipulate him. I do feel guilty about this, but we say things like "[soft toy] is feeling sleep, and needs you to cuddle him so he can go to sleep", and he happily jumps into his cot.

Hope that helps. I think it helps if you aren't around sometimes, as you suggest. It drives me crazy that I can't nap in the mornings while DH looks after DS, as if DS knows I'm in the house he'll batter the doors down. But if I'm out, or they are out together, they are fine.

Thanks for replying and for the suggestions and for sharing your experiences of how things improved for you, even if the only way they improved was because time passed by.

I know a lot is down to sleep although funnily enough I don't actually feel tired, it seems as if I run on adrenaline a lot. Once I have managed to drag myself out of bed in the morning and had something to eat I strangely don't actually feel too tired.

Iggly thank you for the suggestion but he seems to have been blessed with a good digestive system fortunately. He is a happy and contented boy, except for when he's tired and hungry and wants his mummy and nothing else will do.

I guess I will keep trying with everything, am really hoping the naps with DH work out well and we can start doing the same with night wakings. He doesn't take too long to settle and there is not too much crying so hopefully this keeps improving.

I still have these strong compulsions to run away and leave them both to it!

I think around a year with a BF baby is the toughest point. You feel that they should be more independent, you're often exhausted so don't have as much time to devote to the fun stuff that everyone else seems to be raving about, other people have babies who sleep through and are going away for weekends in hotels leaving baby with the GPs, and you just start to resent feeling tied.

By Christmas I'm sure DS will be more independent and if necessary you could go away and hopefully it will be over quickly but don't feel like you're failing because you're not. You're definitely not the only one in this situation and you're doing an amazing job of giving your DS what he needs at the moment.