Stuck feeding back to sleep at night! No good nap routine with EBF bottle refuser..

[MimiArtini]

Hi all FTM here, DD is 6months old and an EBF bottle and dummy refuser 🫠

We have no proper day routine, but she goes to bed around the same time every night - 7pm ish. No fuss at bedtime so that’s one good thing, but usually fed to sleep and I’m trying to break the habit as she now needs the same throughout the night too…😬

She cannn be put down by rocking by someone else, or if she’s awake for some reason after being fed at night will fall asleep after being put down IF happy and tired enough.. 99% of the time it’s me putting her down though so if she does fuss after 5mins I just put her back on boob.. its the quickest easiest thing 🫣

We are however now dealing with many many night wakes! Sometimes every 2hours.. some are 1hour.
The long stretch at the start of the night she used to do seems to have disappeared. This just started around 5months. Before she did long stretches and in-between I knew she was waking for food. I’m in the habit of just sticking her on the breast now and she’ll nod off back to sleep within 5-15minutes depending on if she’s actually having a proper feed. Almost every time myself or DH tries to get her to sleep without doing this it takes muuuch longer (read: doesn’t work) - sometimes escalating into full on crying and waking herself up too much - and when we’re so tired in the middle of the night I just give up and “feed” her.

I know I’ve made a rod for my own back 😩 I want to teach her to self settle but I’m skeptical it will even stop the night wakes.

I guess my question is has anyone got any similar stories or experiencing stopping the night wakes? Is feeding to sleep really THAT bad if it works for a non fussy bedtime… Is the feeding association causing the night wakes, or would these just happen anyway?!

I should add our day routine is pretty non existent. We’re pretty go with the flow but I don’t think I have it in me to be super rigid.. I am not a morning person so 5/6am wakes are middle of the night to me. She’ll usually wake around 7am and chill with us on bed. DH will get her up if the nights been terrible and then we’ll often feed and do her first nap in bed around 9am. She will nap in the day when really tired and doesn’t show massive signs of being overtired but honestly can sometimes stay awake for absolutely hours! She cat naps whilst feeding to “top herself up” so it’s like she hasn’t actually had a proper nap for 6hrs etc. Whilst most of the time feeding to sleep is the trigger for a nap in the day she does also sleep on the go or by being rocked by DH/DM. I can never seem to rock her to sleep myself!

Any advice? Shall I just accept things the way they are if we have reasonably chill bed times or is it worth the tears of breaking the association to have less wakes?! Any success or similar stories most welcome 😅

Sounds very similar to my 7mo. You/I can't rock her to sleep because she knows you have the milk and why would she accept second best.

Feeding to sleep is biologically normal. There's no need to think of it as a bad habit, rod for back etc. All children in time learn to sleep without it. Do not give up such a quick way to get her to sleep.
My firstborn couldn't nurse and I and DH spent many hours rocking and walking him to sleep. It was exhausting. He woke up hourly at points. Feeding to sleep does not cause the night wakes- the baby's developmentally immature brain does. Baby sleep isn't linear- it doesn't automatically improve with age, up to age 3/4. You can go through wonderful periods then bad ones and you'll regret losing the feeding to sleep sooner than naturally.
Second born is EBF and omg it's so much easier just lying in bed feeding her. We cosleep so she feeds on and off all night and it's wonderful, I barely wake up now she's big and clever enough to latch herself without my help. Try it out if you don't cosleep, it's amazing.

I think this is just what 6 month olds are like. It’s nothing you’ve done. Sleep goes to shit around 4-5 months. They still need to eat through the night so feeding to sleep is perfectly fine (and a hell of a lot easier than some of the alternatives). 6 months is particularly tricky as they have usually started solids in the previous few weeks (which often causes sleep issues) and they can be teething. Mine was waking literally every 30 minutes for a bit. It was horrendous, but it’s normal.

She very likely isn’t going to sleep long stretches right now, so do whatever you can do so you can get back to sleep faster. Both of mine were fed to sleep until they didn’t need it anymore. No big deal, never did any sleep training. Give yourself some grace. You’re worried about all the things you might be doing wrong, but you’re doing all the right things. Having a baby is just hard.

6 months is a major growth spurt. The extra feeds are what she needs to fuel the growth spurt, it’s not due to you creating a rod for your own back or failing in any way. I think new parents expect a baby to settle into one routine and stick with it. This isn’t reality. The amount of feeds and sleep a baby does is largely dependent on preparing for or doing the different growth and developmental spurts.

My advice is to just go with the flow, give baby what she wants when she wants it. You cannot spoil a 6mo old and they cannot manipulate you. Let go of all expectations of baby should go to bed with no feed, baby should sleep x hours straight. These are all rubbish imho. Every baby is different and every baby knows when they need food, cuddles, a clean nappy and sleep.

Mediocre Success story for my baby learning to take a bottle of expressed breast milk is I left DH with baby and bottle and drove off for several hours over when I knew she would be hungry. Baby then accepted the bottle from DH. Baby never accepted a bottle from me or if I were anywhere nearby because the breast was always the #1 preference.

Thanks all - I needed to hear these comments. It’s hard not to think something needs to be changed when social media sleep coaches will have you believe you’re doing it all wrong. And don’t get me wrong I know some people do manage to fix all the issues, with babies that settle themselves independently. The dream! I guess I’m just so skeptical of being able to get there that I’m not too willing to go through the training 🫣 I guess I’ll be more keen for trying if and when it gets too much! Like absolutely broken and can’t be broken any more sort of thing, as already broken with sleep deprivation but it’s the new normal now right… 😅 But I love reframing it as a gift to be able to feed to sleep quickly 🙏

It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone!

hey 👋 my older 4 were bottle fed so self settled as soon as they could hold their own bottles, my 8 month old is ebf also refuses bottles and dummy, she used to sleep 6/7 hours from bedtime and then wake every 2-3 hours, since about 4/5 months she sleeps 3 hours tops from bedtime and wakes every 1/2 hours, and needs to be fed to sleep else she wakes up too much and is awake for hours, ive got no advice lol it seems to be the norm for ebf babies 🤷🏻‍♀️ im just hoping she grows out of it and struggling through at the moment lol she doesn’t sleep much in the day either 30 mins twice a day maximum xx

Glad you're able to see the positives OP.
It's definitely a gift in my eyes. It's one of the reasons I was so keen to crack BF with youngest after not managing with eldest. I was jealous of friends who could contact nap just by sitting down feeding and who could meet the safe sleep 7 for cosleeping (BF makes it safer as you rouse more easily to baby's movements, hormonal influence). It hasn't disappointed. I'm sitting here feeding my 7mo to sleep whilst watching Netflix and MNing. Not for me a return to the days of pacing about a dark room for 30 mins carrying an increasingly heavy wriggly lump!

so if she does fuss after 5mins I just put her back on boob.. its the quickest easiest thing

This resonates the most for me. Why make the change then! :-)

Changing the habit probably won't reduce wakes, and will mean you're up longer resettling. Six months is a hard age for sleep, I promise it gets better and over time they will wake less (as will you).

I will say our next step is moving her to her own room. I’ve been putting it off due to this reason but going to have to very soon due to how long she’s getting.

I can imagine it will feel much more painful when I’m trawling to another room multiple times a night… maybe I’ll lose my positivity on it then 🙈 Did anyone in similar situations put a cot in your room instead or moved to co sleeping? I can probably just about uncomfortably squeeze a cot in our room but wandering if that will just be prolonging the problem… I do hear it can sometimes fix night wakes so who knows!

DS is now 20. Hasn’t needed help with sleeping since he was under 12mnths. You are not making a rod for your back, you are just responding to your babies needs. It really doesn’t last forever. Co sleeping makes it easier if you and your partner are comfortable with it. We have a six foot bed which made it easy. By 12 mnths DS would help himself without waking me.
Sleep was never an issue despite all the comments we got from family. To be honest I just told them as little as possible.
They are little for such a short time, they stop holding your hand on the way into school by age 7 and then, like mine, they basically use the house like a hotel and then disappear of to Uni and don’t look back.

Op, enjoy this time, very soon you will long for the cuddles and closeness that sharing your space gives you. It’s not a chore it is a privilege.

Another option is moving DC to their own room but on a floor bed so you can feed to sleep then roll away, then if they wake up loads you can just go and co sleep with them. Obviously the room needs to be 100% baby proof.

Yes likewise I wasn't keen on going next door multiple times per night. We were already cosleeping part of the night but when DD outgrew the next to me, we moved the cotbed to sidecar our bed. By putting our bedframe on the floor it was the same height as the lowest setting of the cotbed so it has basically extended the size of the adult mattress. Actually easier than having the next to me because it's a continuous surface instead of that silly lip the next to mes all have. Cosleeping isn't prolonging the problem- it's a way to cope with the 'problem' ie meaning the multiple night wakes until brain is mature enough not to. I can't stress enough that my eldest has the sleep training perfect environment of own room own cot bottle fed self settled, never fed to sleep, yet still woke through the night regularly until .. er I don't know because he's 2.5 and still wakes! Not regularly though, that stopped about 16 months when we started cosleeping with him.

Yes we did. We had a cot in our bedroom. Most people I know did this, it’s senseless to not have them close when they still wake at night and frighten easily. A baby is more likely to learn to wake up and self soothe back to sleep if they are not alone in a dark room.

I have taken the side of the cotbed off and wedged the cotbed between my bed and the wall so their is no gap, that way i can slid her over, feed and slid her back, i moved the cotbed a couple weeks ago because, she went through a phase where if i picked her up to move her to her cot she would wake up and cry and of course needed feeding back to sleep again, it has worked to stop that, but not the waking in the night lol xx