How can I break the breastfeeding to sleep cycle

[jazzer2012]

My little one is almost thirteen months. She has become very dependent on breastfeeding, for comfort, partly my own fault probably as it is a quick and easy way to comfort her and get her back to sleep. She has never been a good sleeper. She can be comforted by my Partner and he can get her back to sleep well by placing her on his chest. She will take a bottle if she is hungry. The problem I have at the moment is I have just returned to work and will be doing one night shift a week. My daughter is still not sleeping through the night. My Partner will be the one looking after her when I am at work. He can comfort her a couple of times if she wakes up but then she looks for me and is only comforted back to sleep by a breast feed. I did my first night shift and it was a disaster with me having to leave the shift after only being there three hours as my daughter was inconsolable looking around for me and wanting a breastfeed. How can I break this cycle of nightfeeding to sleep? Have tried giving her water, a bottle etc. but she just discards it. My Partner tried everything to get her to settle and even left her to cry for short periods but nothing worked and she just became very distressed. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Just to add, she had been a bit poorly and still had a cough/cold and we are not sure whether she may be teething (she still doesn't have any but looks like they may come through soon) so don't really want to do all this controlled crying etc. in case there is another factor involved.

I started to wean my DD off night time breastfeeding at this age. I did it mainly because I felt that she fed to sleep out of habit, because it had been the easiest thing for me to do (she was a difficult baby!) to get her to sleep and get her back to sleep when she woke multiple times. By 13 or 14 months it seemed to be a distraction and didn't seem to be helping her get to sleep (she was thrashing around and not really feeding) but she did it because it was all she knew how to do.

It did take a long time to wean her off though, a couple of months probably before she went to sleep contentedly at night. I initially tried about 30 seconds of putting her down and leaving the room (intending to go for a minute) but she was so distressed she reared back and banged her head on the cot so I sat with her instead. I carried on doing this, sitting with her, stroking her etc until she went to sleep each night. She still cried (lots), because it was hard for her to change the habit of a lifetime, but eventually she calmed down and got there. I think that is the difficult thing - when a baby has to change a habit they actually quite like, and especially something so 'vital' and physical to them as breastfeeding, they do get distressed and there is not much you can do about it except try to comfort them and be there for them! Eventually they will become OK with it, they will start to forget that it is what they did, it's just hard going for all of you while they adapt.

That probably isn't a lot of help to you. I suppose what I am trying to say is that the only thing IMO that you can do is not feed her to sleep, and continue trying to calm her with your presence/cuddles etc (I know this can seem futile - my DD really did scream) but it can be a long game.

My DD is 2.9 now and goes to bed by herself regardless of whether it is me or DH that puts her to bed and she sleeps through the night unless she wakes up for a random reason (gets too hot or cold or something). She did sleep much better through they night as I recall once weaned off feeding to sleep.

Good luck!

That was another reason I didn't want to do controlled crying - DD didn't have teeth at that stage either and then they spend a looong time getting teeth! Also she was just not the sort of baby/child who controlled crying would have worked for. She didn't ever 'grizzle' - it was full on screaming all the way.