To be upset by this or not?

[Muma2one]

So to give a bit of background information, my dd is 2 and the only way to get her to sleep is to breastfeed her to sleep. Which I am happy with unless she is feeding for a long time to get to sleep and not showing any signs of drifting off. Which is what was happening last night. She started to say that she wanted to go downstairs and see daddy. Instead we asked him upstairs to read a story, after 5 minutes he said I’m going downstairs now, I’m not wasting any more of my Saturday night up here. I said that that wasn’t really very supportive. He then said you come down as well then. After about twenty more minutes I went down with her as well and shortly after he disappeared upstairs. I just want him to be more of a help with bedtime and at least try and get her to sleep if breastfeeding isn’t working that night. Am I being unreasonable?

My two year old is still breastfed to sleep! What some of you call pandering I call responding to her needs. She can and does also fall asleep without milk incidentally.

Also, we co sleep and she goes to bed at the same time as me. Getting her to bed at 7 and waking up at 6 would leave me permanently exhausted. I’m not an early morning waker. 9-8 works for us. What I’m saying is, what works for one person doesn’t work for another so the pile up on the OP is very unhelpful.

OP you aren't doing anything wrong here. I was in the same situation so let me try and offer something.

Your husband isn't seeming to understand the pressure and perhaps he's thinking ‘why doesn't she just cease breastfeeding?’

I totally get your want to respond to your baby’s needs and feed her to sleep because it's what's natural (biologically, not socially) and to try to stop is not easy.

I'm not sure you can have what I had because my husband is absolutely amazing and supported me feeding until 4.5 years of age, but it was him to got our girl into bed at 2 years because she stopped feeding to sleep and started jumping on and off me all night long while we were co-sleeping. So he was the one who put her into her own room, which wasn't ideal for her, because she cried, but I had to because I could not have her on and off me all night long.

You are going to have to stop feeding her to sleep now and start weaning her off at night time. It's okay to do that. You're probably touched out and you've done an amazing thing for your child to feed this long, and daytime feeds can continue but you don’t have to do it all night long at this point.

You can sleep train now. Start giving the one feed, then get her off and tell her it's time to sleep without milk now. It will be difficult and it will be painful but you're doing the right thing for your mental wellbeing.

Whatever works for you, read around the methods, the disappearing chair, things like that. And just have your goal to get it done and don’t waiver.

"She started to say that she wanted to go downstairs and see daddy. Instead we asked him upstairs to read a story, after 5 minutes he said I’m going downstairs now, I’m not wasting any more of my Saturday night up here. I said that that wasn’t really very supportive. He then said you come down as well then. After about twenty more minutes I went down with her as well and shortly after he disappeared upstairs."

I think this is the bit that would have me annoyed. Being the default parent for a particular task (or all of them I'm not making assumptions) is tiring and draining and sometimes you don't need a bloody solution you just want support and sympathy!

He could have said something like "not sure I can help with settling her but can I get you a cup of tea?" Or "ill sit with her why you have a break and we can try again in 15 mins"

That child wasn't going to learn to self soothe right then so all the "you're doing bedtime wrong" comments aren't really helpful right then.

I didn't breastfeed when mine were that age, but I definitely don't see anything wrong with it. I didn't make any conscious decision to stop before that, it was circumstantial.

There are so many reasons why kids might find it difficult to get to sleep as a one off, or have sleep regression, or hit a stage where a previous sleep strategy stops working. I remember one of my children at about 2/2.5 having a real problem with getting to sleep, and I think it was related to new baby, move to toddler bed etc. We spent what felt like months doing gradual withdrawal.

I think what I'm trying to say is, a one off failure doesn't mean your strategy no longer works, but if it's happening all the time now, you could look at adapting your strategy. Either way it should be a joint conversation and both parents supporting your child. So no, YANBU to expect your partner to help your child with sleep.

I can see why his comment was frustrating, but glad to see he does play an active role in bedtime (as he should)- just feeding to sleep he obviously can't do and as you say it usually isn't an issue as just takes a few mins. As you want to carry on feeding, great, it seems just need to discuss together what might help if that doesn't work, it will be useful anyway for when she weans to have have an idea of stuff that helps (whenever that is). For DD we had a stories only policy, lots of cuddles but unless poorly wouldn't go back downstairs or to do x, y ior z just because. If it was quite late into the evening could maybe try something other than feeding within a quicker time frame? Maybe take turns?

I've RTFT and all your updates OP.

Your DP was not being unreasonable.

The issue isn't bf'ing at 2 which is absolutely fine & normal, nor is it that she has a b/f at night, also normal!

However, breastfeeding to sleep isn't great, as she should be self-settling at 2 - so a b/f, stories, a cuddle & then she goes to sleep. If she's not ready for sleep, there can be a few options for her eg looking at her books, or staying in her room, awake, but expecting 2 adults to be running around trying multiple strategies to settle her is silly.

It sounds like most of the time bedtime works tho. Plus DP is actively involved in bedtime.

Therefore I don't think there's much you need to do.

In terms of last night, I'd have let DP head down, and told DD, it's bedtime, time to sleep, and left her. Just put her back quietly if she gets up, but no chat or discussion. Both you & DP should do this.

He could have been more supportive but you defo need to work on the feeding to sleep. At that age she should be able to go to sleep without the breast. It will be a ruff few days but it will be better in the long run.

He isn’t against breastfeeding at all, in fact he was trying to encourage me to carry on breastfeeding her last night because he thought it would get her to sleep but I explained that it wasn’t working last night. Usually she is asleep within minutes of feeding which is working for us.

OP it generally works for you and is lovely. Extraordinary how many want to assert that it’s not good or not right or not great. Make any changes you feel you need to but there is no need for the feeding to sleep to stop for any reason other than because you want it to.

this posted is a waste as you clearly only want one specific answer and now that some posters are agreeing with you, you have what you came for.

In reality, both moms and dads sometimes get frustrated. That doesn't make him bad or evil or a bad parent. Rather than trying to get people to side with you against your husband, you would be better to be open to understanding his perspective and why he felt the way he did. That leads to more open communication. He isn't always going to do exactly what you want, when you want, how you want every single time. He is an independent adult with his own feelings and through process and you can't control him. I know you have the responses that you want saying he was wrong and you are right and you should now go reprimand him for his bad behaviour but few adults respond well to that approach from a spouse. Asking people how they are feeling and wha they are thinking and where they are coming from leads to much more fruitful discussions but that might mean he sees something differently than you and given your responses in this thread, I don't think you will be open to that.

He wasn't unreasonable. It may have been hard top settle her but calling for him to come and read to her, then taking her downstairs again was not appropriate. Once a child is in bed, they stay in bed, even if that's to play with their teddies or listen to a story CD.

I wasn’t happy about the negative responses about breastfeeding particularly as I wasn’t asking about that. Not a waste of time and your advice within your post is actually helpful. I’m not wanting people to say he is a bad parent. I know he is an amazing dad and the bond between them both is lovely. I am open and later when she is in bed we will discuss it openly together and I will ask him how he was feeling etc.

Wow people are being pretty unkind OP. I'm still nursing my 3 1/2 to sleep. It works for us and my husband is really supportive of it. There are some odd ideas about breastfeeding in this country.

Very odd isn’t it! One comment said that it must be awful for us all. It’s not awful at all. Tiring at times like last night but not awful.

Just an update… we have since had a discussion and the reason he said that was because he felt that it wouldn’t of made a difference if he stayed up there as he wouldn’t of been able to get her to sleep. I explained to him that I wasn’t asking for him to get her to sleep but just to have some quiet time. We’ve talked about what we would do next time in this situation.