I can’t stop feeding to sleep

[Moonshine160]

DS has just turned 9 months old. He’s been a bad sleeper since the 4 month regression. Whenever he wakes in the night (which is two hourly) he is always quickly fed back to sleep. Rocking/cuddling him doesn’t work and I get too tired to try for long lengths of time so I know that I’m not doing anything to help myself here but I’m just so exhausted. He will, however, be rocked to sleep for naps and bedtime by me.
I am going back to work in 3 weeks and my hours include me working one evening per week when DH will have to put DS to bed, so for the last couple of weeks DH has tried to take over bedtime. The problem is is that he just won’t go to sleep for DH, even if I feed him at the start of the bedtime routine then hand him over to him. DH will try and rock him, cuddle him, sing, shh pat, lie beside his cot, but he will just scream until he eventually passes out in his arms but by that time it’s late and he’s overtired and then sleeps even worse. So more often than not I will intervene and just quickly feed him to sleep and he closes his eyes within seconds. He will take a bottle of expressed milk but only very reluctantly and only about 2oz but this doesn’t help him fall asleep either.
It’s really stressing me out, how is DH going to get him to sleep? Do we just keep trying and one day it’ll happen?
I need to add that DS has been an unwell baby, he has two congenital heart conditions that eventually require surgery. His conditions don’t cause poor sleep, but it does mean that I want to cause him as little distress as possible hence why I can’t and won’t sleep train him. I want there to be as little crying as possible but if DH tries to put him to bed he just screams :(

I guess every time you feed him to sleep he learns he will get it if he waits long enough, could you try a dummy to help soothe him to sleep? I’d try getting him in a good routine, same wake time each day and naps at same time. Preferably in his cot. Making sure he’s ready for sleep at bedtime and try to break the bf and sleep association with a dummy. Or maybe ask dr if he can be allowed to cry while going to sleep, I understand the not wanting to sleep train but it’s possible he’d start sleeping fine within 1-3 nights with minimum fuss and may well be worth trying for you all instead of months of little sleep, fuss getting him to sleep. Good luck with what ever you do try!

Will he sleep in the car or the pram? Maybe could take him for a bedtime drive? Then if you need to resettle him when you're home you can feed him. It's not a perfect solution, but its short phase of life and doing it like this might elevate some stress for your dc.

Bumpjng and following for help too as I can't stop feeding to sleep either and you're not alone
However, my ds is now 21mo so I really can't see how I stop it...
Hoping you get some great advice that I can borrow
Where does your ds sleep? Do you co-sleep?

DH put him in a carrier at bedtime. If he just goes out doing normal stuff, he may well fall asleep within 30 mins or so without DH even really thinking about it. Then attempt to transfer out.

Seconding that you could try a dummy. I preferred not to use one with my eldest, but it was a God send with my twins. Very tough time when I had to stay in hospital with one twin at 11 months. I had no idea how the other one would sleep.... bottle and a dummy and apparently he did. (He was already used to the dummy for nap times and before bed). Dummies are incredibly useful if you have a baby that wants to feed to sleep but you need someone else to do bedtime.

I never sleep trained any of mine. I don't have the constitution for lots of crying at night! I'd rather be woken several times but only briefly. I didn't stop feeding any I my 3 to sleep until they were over 2. Of course, if you want to, you can. And they are flexible enough that they can do one thing with you and learn another routine with another person.

@twoandcooplease is there a reasom you want to stop now? That's a really difficult age to night wean! Honestly at this stage it's probably going to be easier if you wait 6 months... I realise thought you might be unwilling. You can do it any time, but I reckon you might get a fair amountof resistance. With toddlers, I strongly recommend reading weaning stories with them -Sally WeansFrom Night Nursing, Loving Comfort, Nursies When the Sun Shines.... I'm sure there are more but we liked those. Stories help them mentally prepare before you start the process and help them understand what WON'T change, which is reassuring. But that level of understanding is achieved much more quickly at 2+. You generally want to tackle the feeding to sleep at bedtime before you tackle the night wakes. Happy to chat more id it's helpful to you.

Although he hasn’t settled for dad well so far, he might surprise you when you’re not there and he has no other options. The first few times might still be rocky but as long as your partner is patient and willing to find his own way of offering comfort at bedtime, he will get there.

I still feed my DS (who is nearly two) to sleep. But I cut out night feeds at 19months as he was waking so frequently. He will now settle fine for my husband and I recently went away for the night and he only woke once and happily cuddled up with my husband and Co-slept fine.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Yes, he’s always had a dummy and he has it for bedtime and nap time. Unfortunately the dummy alone doesn’t send him off to sleep though without being fed first.

I usually don’t mind feeding him to sleep at all, it’s just that I’ll be at work that’s the issue. It would also be nice to be able to go out in an evening occasionally without worrying about him screaming himself to sleep in my absence :(

@Amammai can I ask how how you cut out the night feeds? It’s going to be a good few months until we’re able to cut them out entirely but I really would like to reduce the amount of times he feeds in the night, he doesn’t need milk every 2 hours

I think you'll be surprised by what baby will do when there's no other options but in the meantime I would absolutely use a dummy.

You could also start reduce feeds throughout the night so if baby wakes between 10-1am then feed 120ml, 1-3am 90ml, 3-5am 60ml. If baby wakes after 5am I would just grit my teeth and wait til 6am and start the day with a proper feed then. Eventually you start knocking the feeds on the head or they stop waking.

In my experience 9 months was hell on earth sleep wise and it turned out DS was just absolutely starving. I'd been going along with 'food before one is just for fun'.... Well that's not actually the case for everyone. My son wanted 3 big meals a day and as soon as I figured it out, he slept. And also he started needing quite a bit more stimulation this age too.

My point being, if you want to influence your baby's sleep with very little crying involved then you need to look at his daytime routine, sleep, and food intake. When you get this right, sleep can improve massively. Key is to focus on stopping them waking up in the first place.

We did do a bit of 'controlled crying' once things had improved a lot already - the longest I ever left him was 7 minutes, which was horrid and felt like a life time but we cracked it in 2 nights.

If you are breastfeeding then obviously you'd need to reduce timings rather than ml! But if he will take a bottle of expressed milk that might also be a way of breaking the cycle?

With DC 1 I was back at work at 5.5 months so a bit earlier but DC refused a bottle until I was physically at work (12.5hr shifts 3x a week) and there was some crying but DC got used to it then settled fine with DH. Night weaned at 16 months....gradually dropped a feed at a time and offered water in a sippy cup. Some crying but not too bad (was a 2 hrly wake and feed baby).

DC2 much more relaxed baby, around 5 months DH sat in rocking chair and sang and rocked to sleep. Initially crying to sleep but then settled nicely. It took a couple of weeks of steadily less crying time but DC was being held by DH throughout. I didn't go back to work till 11 months and night weaned at 20 month....oops. DC2 naps and sleeps better for DH than me.

It's really tough but when they have no option they get used to it and will sleep/feed eventually. Its awful at the time though.

For night feeds I went cold-turkey and it actually wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. I fed to sleep as normal then on his first wake-up I just said ‘all gone’ when he tried to feed and kept repeating that. He did cry but I cuddled him and sang to him etc and kept saying ‘all gone’

I’d say his cry was more like a protest (similar to when I say ‘no’ to o e-cream for breakfast 😂) He cried for 15minutes the first wake-up then less than 10 on each of the next wake ups. I held him and cuddled him each time for the whole time. By night 3 he was only waking twice and going back to sleep with a quick cuddle and no tears.

He still Co-sleeps with us after first wake-up and I’m happy to continue with that. I just could not cope with night feeds every 45mins- 2hrs!