When did you stop feeding to sleep?

[Beachwaves127]

My Dc is ten months and EBF and no dummy (she was not interested in one). Currently I feed her to sleep. It is quite quick I feed her at 7.45pm and she’s conked in her bed by 8pm. If she wakes in the night I also feed to sleep.

She currently wakes 2-3 times a night.

Just having a bit of a panic as I’m going back to work soon. Sometimes I think this is ok as in reality it’s quite quick and easy to do. Other times I think gosh she’s never going to learn to self soothe.

-Interested in hearing other stories / experiences about when you feed to sleep, did you stop or did baby reject, and how did you go from feeding to sleep to being able to put baby in her crib at 8pm and her drift off by herself.

-i really don’t understand how or when we will make the jump from feeding to sleep to her being able to put herself to sleep?

-is waking 2/3 times normal at this age for an EBF

ps she can self settle at times some times she stirs / wakes a little at end of sleep cycles but will put herself back to sleep.

Interested in the responses as I still feed my 12mo to sleep and am going back to work soon too. I'm not sure she'd let me put her to bed without it yet to be honest.

I feed my 16mo to sleep, though half the week DH puts her to bed and she manages to get to sleep fine. I bf my eldest until she was 3.5 years, but she was sleep trained by 2 and slept through after that, so she wasn't fed to sleep. I'm a sahm so I don't have to worry about being up for work, though obviously I have to care for the dc all day.

Following as in a similar situation, DD is 6 months and EBF, started some foods but she's not showing much interest. I feed her to sleep and when she's asleep put her in her cot, she wakes after 30 mins or less so I have to feed her to sleep again and repeat the process for a few hours. During the night she's up anywhere from 3 times to 10 times. I'm really struggling mostly as my DH can't comfort her or put her to sleep which is impacting us and my older DS. I'm interested in sleep training but don't think it'll work as I've tried giving her time to resettle and she gets herself more and more upset until she is sick.

Can I ask what is night weaning?

Hi could you send me the info too, definitely want to try getting a better routine started for my 6 month old

16 months here, still feed to sleep, still feed back to sleep. Zero plans to stop because I have no desire to make life more difficult for myself by taking away my most reliable method (and potentially not being able to find another). We still wake 4+ times a night.

For context I work 7 days a week, am the primary carer for my child Mon-Fri and bodybuild (for anyone assuming I must do nothing with my days to be able to tolerate multiple night wakes).

The only question you need to ask is whether it's working for you and your child. If the answer is yes then why change anything.

My DS is 10 months old, I'm back at work soon and not wanting my sleep disturbed either- I think I have more or less night-weaned him. I'm also pregnant again, and I'm not up for tandem-feeding when LO2 comes along!

I introduced a bedtime bottle a couple of months ago. Daddy does the bedtime bottle. I used to express so he had a breast milk bottle, but I stopped pumping, and switched to a formula feed. Say a 150-200ml bottle for bed. Daddy would snuggle and put him in his cot when he was asleep. Baby woke once, sometimes twice in the night for a quick breast feed. Then I stopped offering him the breast and tried just rocking back to sleep. Usually with success.

A couple of weeks ago I gave daddy a 200-210ml bottle; he holds him for half of it and then puts him in his cot with his bottle so he's feeding himself. Since then, baby has only woken in the night to have a little grizzle and then goes back to sleep! At the moment, it feels like we've worked a miracle! 🤩

Our back up-plan, should baby start waking in the night again, is that daddy attends to him. Baby should soon cotton on that there's no milk.

Wishing you luck!

So with DD1 I fed to sleep til about 2.5, she started sleeping through on her own at about 11/12 months which is around the time I went back to work. Up until that point she'd wake 2/3 times a night, and she just started sleeping through.

DD2 started sleeping through from about 7 months, we have the occasional rough week when teething and the occasional night when she'll wake around 1230. We're still feeding to sleep at 18 months, and I went back to work a couple of months ago (later than DD1 because we relocated and I changed jobs).

I would rather have the ability to feed to sleep than not at this stage. It gets them back to sleep much quicker and they'd probably wake up anyway.

Be aware that night weaning / not feeding to sleep might not make her sleep through. My DD night weaned at 17 months and stopped feeding to sleep at 24 months but still wakes in the night and she’s 3 now!

Thank you everyone who replied. Some really helpful replies.

I’ve had a think, digested everyone’s messages and also had a chat with my health visitior.

For now I’m going to be “strict” at night and only feed baby every four hours + after her bedtime milk. If she wakes within four hours she will be offered water and then rocked to sleep. (Yes I know rocking is hard work!). We started last night and yes the rocking is tiring but actually baby didn’t complain about not being fed to sleep, and then she only woke up once more. Depending how this goes we may increase the feeding to 6 hours+ at night, and we may also look at some gentle sleep training to help baby self settle, but I’m treating that as a seperate matter for now. For now I’m just keen to cut down on the bfs.

thanks again,
and I hope this helped others too.

Thanks this has definitely helped me, best of luck!! Keep us updated xox