Did stopping breastfeeding improve baby’s sleep?

[Moonshine160]

DS2 is nearly 7 months old and is waking hourly overnight, sometimes two hourly if I’m lucky. He only ever naps for 30 mins at a time. I honestly feel broken and I am writing this while crying because I am truly exhausted. I have to feed him to sleep as I can’t get him to sleep any other way. This is for every wake up in the night. We’ve recently got him to accept formula in a bottle from DH. Even when he’s had this, he still wants a breastfeed to get him to sleep and won’t settle unless he has this. I’m starting to feel touched out and completely fed up. If I gradually introduce more formula and end breastfeeding, would this improve his sleep? Did this happen for anyone else? He definitely has a feed to sleep association (breast, he’s never fallen asleep on the bottle). I am considering sleep training but I don’t know what method or how to even go about it. I just need to do something because my mental health is suffering.

DS has no health issues. Tongue tie was cut at 8 weeks. He is being weaned onto solids (purée and finger food but only has tiny bits of the finger food so far) and has taken to it really well, he’s on three small meals a day.

Fed to sleep because she wasn’t a big baby and I figured she might be hungry. She nightweaned herself once she got the hang of solids

There's zero scientific evidence that formula will help your baby to sleep. What you're seeing yourself is that a bottle hasn't made any difference either.

What you can do is try some gradual retreat sleep training and swapping around when you feed to see if that helps any with the sleep.

You could also get your partner or family to do the contact naps over the weekend so you can go to sleep as well.

How's weaning going? Is he taking much food?

It's ok if he's on the 2nd centile. If that's his line and he's following it, it's fine. Some babies are more petite.

Didn't improve it for me

You’re right you can’t go on. I’d suggest you start feeding him but not to sleep. Give him a nurse then, hold him & rock or sway him to sleep. It will be rough at first, but once he is used to it, then you can do a night feed and then hand him off to your partner to hold/rock him to sleep.

In parallel, I’d see what you can do about getting him to sleep a bit longer. What sort of nap and bedtime schedule do you have? What sort of physical activity- crawling and such does he do?

Thanks for all your comments.
I am certainly not expecting him to sleep through but I just can’t continue as I am. Prior to 4 months old he was only having 1 or 2 feeds a night and I realise now how great it was. I feel broken. Last night was horrendous, he mostly woke every 45 mins. The longest stretch of sleep he did was 1 hour 5 mins. I suspect that sweet potato doesn’t agree with him which is why we’ve had two nights worse than normal.
He has 3 naps a day. One 30 min catnap at around 9/9:30am, a 2 hr nap at lunchtime and then another 20/30 min nap at about 4:30pm. About 3 hours in total daytime sleep. The long nap has to be a contact nap otherwise he’d wake after 30 mins.
For bedtime this evening I’ve managed to get him off to sleep in his crib rather than feeding or rocking him to sleep. I stroked his head and shushed him until he dozed off. He was a bit agitated but not half as bad as I thought he would be. He has woken twice already though :(

How are things now? I'm in the same position as you were and looking for some reassurance things will get better

@Janebloom hiya. It’s still very up and down. He’s 12 months now and last week slept through for the first time ever, hasn’t happened since though! Some nights he will wake numerous times and some nights he’ll only wake once which is great. It certainly has got better but not as good as I’d hoped at this point. I think the thing that helped us was when he could get himself into comfier positions in his cot. Hang in there. It will improve x

Made no difference for my kids. DD1 and DD2 both breastfed and co-slept, did nothing different. DD1 didn’t sleep through the night until 3.5 years (not breastfeed at that point) and DD2 slept through the night at 12 weeks!

DD1 used to wake constantly wanting to feed. You have my sympathy. It’s horrendous.

Thanks for responding! Did you end up stopping breastfeeding, my little one has a strong feeding to sleep association and feel possibly stopping breastfeeding may improve sleep, or at least give me a break!

@Janebloom no, I’m still breastfeeding now. I don’t want to stop because I’m scared of taking away the only tool I have to get him back to sleep quickly during the night. He doesn’t feed to sleep for naps and bedtime anymore, around the 8/9 month mark he started staying awake until the end of the feed so I rocked him to sleep instead, then he started resisting that too so I just put him down in his cot and he falls asleep independently now. I still feed him to sleep though whenever he wakes in the night.

That sounds like a good improvement? That would be ideal situation for me tbh does baby settle to sleep for your partner? Glad to see it's something that baby did for themselves, scared I'll still be feeding to sleep when baby is 2 years old

@Janebloom yes very good improvement. It’s just the middle of the night that we haven’t cracked yet because if he wakes he still relies on being fed back to sleep. And during the night I’m just too tired to try any other way and it usually works very quickly. He will accept DH putting him to bed now yes. Before he just used to cry and cry. Again, this was something that just changed all on its own around 10/11 months I’d say. You won’t be feeding to sleep forever I promise! Even if you do nothing and no sleep training, it’ll change eventually.