Breastfeeding to sleep, trying to switch to formula

[Baby302]

My daughter is coming up to 8 months old and up until 7 months we exclusively breastfed with the odd bottle here and there. I now want to move on to bottles during the day so I have a bit more freedom. She’s currently taking about 3oz with the bottle for each feed but then goes onto my breast to feed and fall asleep. Any tips to move away from breastfeeding her to sleep I’m worried I will end up over feeding her as well. I guess once I master getting her to sleep without my boob she will up her formula intake.

Has she always fed to sleep or is that a new thing? (I wouldn't worry about overfeeding if it's on the breast)

If it's a habit she's had for a while then you'll have to work pretty hard to break it. It took me 3 months of sleep training to fully move away from it.

Yes she has always fed to sleep, it just felt natural to do but now she won’t go to sleep unless I’m there so think I will need to change something. What type of sleep training did you do?
Do you think I could over feed her if I’m giving her formula as well before breast, I presumed she would just stop when she was full.

Can you rock her to sleep instead?

My 6mo usually feeds to sleep but will also be rocked (it just takes longer and I find I have to be a lot more observant of sleep cues as if he's not the right level of tiredness it won't work). We also do motion naps in the pram and carrier.

@ChildWontStopGrowing also interested in how you did this, assume with it taking 3 months it was quite a gentle process? I'm not a fan of the 3 nights of crying-esque quick fixes.

By a bit more freedom do you mean so you can leave her with someone else? Because in my experience of 3 bf babies, they will take bottles and / or sleep much better when you aren't around! If you are happy to continue bf then just do that when you're with her and you can always provide whoever is looking after her with a bottle for when you aren't there. Same with sleep - you can feed her to sleep and other people will work out their own ways! I never believed my clingy, contact napping, ebf ds1 would ever nap at nursery without me and guess what - they had him down in under 5 minutes on his first day with no problems at all.

Or if you mean so you can get more done while she sleeps and you aren't nap-trapped , I'd recommend perfecting the side-lying feeding position and then ninja roll away when she's asleep! You can get bed guards or just put the mattress on the floor if you're worried about her rolling or crawling off the bed. I've done this with all of mine and it does take practice but does work.

@Calphurnia88 It was not particularly gentle - he just resisted so much! We switched to feed to soothe, but he had to fall asleep in his bed. I left him for 6 min, then fed to soothe, leave for 8 minutes, rinse and repeat adding 2 min each time.

On day 3 he was finally starting to fall asleep in bed, and he was nodding off pretty quickly after a few weeks. But it was AGES of him not going to sleep until after the 6 minute feed to soothe. Honestly though I think if I had to do it again it wouldn't take so long, because I know what to do.

A bit if both really. I went out the other evening and had to come home because my other half couldn’t get her to sleep. We are going to try again soon with my sister who has 2 kids so hopefully she can perfect it.
I side feed which is bloody amazing but it’s takes a good hour for me to be able to prise her off me without are nuzzling back in for more so works better at night then it does during the day but will keep persevering!!

@Calphurnia88 i’ll give rocking her a go again but it just seems that as soon as I take her off she desperately nuzzle searching for boob 😂

I have to rock until my DS is fast asleep (although even then we have some false starts and I'm back to square one 🙈).

I go through phases where I want to move totally away from feeding to sleep too, but it's just so fast and easy! It's not forever.

Honestly, at this age we did CC with a rock solid bedtime routine and it took 3 days, then she was putting herself to sleep at bedtime and for naps. Still woke to feed in the night, because we'd had dreadful weight gain issues, but cut that out at 10m and it only took one night. She's slept 7-7 without any assistance ever since.

God knows but good luck. We switched to rocking for a while, but went back to feeding as she was too heavy. Sleep training was horrific, and we ending up back with feeding. "Baby" is now 2 😭