Gentlest way to stop feeding 12 month old to sleep?

[Pleasegetmeacoffeesotired]

Dd is 11.5 months old and is breastfed to sleep for every nap and bedtime. I've recently found out I'm pregnant, very early on still, but I want to break the feed-to-sleep habit so her dad can do bedtime and just to make everything easier with a new baby.

I'm expecting a lot of resistance from dd so I'm looking for the easiest, gentlest way to break the habit and what to replace it with. Any advice welcome!

No advice, but commenting here to follow! Also recently pregnant and DS 19 months is a boob monster. We cosleep at night and he'll latch a good 5 or 6 times overnight and any other form of settling he just erupts. Also have older kids in house who I obviously don't want to disturb at night.

He must be really tired. At 19 months waking 6 times a night just won’t give him the sleep he needs. The eruptions are because he’s too tired to be emotionally regulated.

With DS at 10 months I started with the naps, I just didn’t offer and walked him in the buggy until he napped off. Try to restrict cot naps as that’s when they expect it. Drifting off out and about it easier.

Thanks for your comment! She will sometimes fall asleep in the pram, but it takes at least an hour of walking and she wakes everytime I try and get her into the house asleep so I have to sit outside with her. It's getting a lot colder too so I don't think it'll be doable for very long.

Change to bottle for now?

We've never been able to get her to take a bottle, unfortunately.

He doesn't do cot naps. And no, he's not tired... he is a very low sleep needs baby. I am also very low sleep need.

LOTS OF KIDS wake multiple times well into 3/4/5.

I think cold turkey will probably be the quickest and most effective (and therefore kindest) method.

Hand over naptime and bedtime to your DP for a few days and break the habit.

Does she have a dummy?

I was thinking cold-turkey may be the easiest when she turns one. The only concern I have is that her dad's work patterns are unpredictable so I don't know if that would be confusing to her, if it suddenly has to be me putting her to bed again?

No dummy either. We tried forever with different brands of bottles and dummies to no avail.

There's a chance your milk will change flavour or dry up with the hormones so she might still self wean. If it's not urgent, maybe give her a few months to see if that happens

I'd try and get a run of at least three days (ideally longer, but do what you can) where your DP can do it to break the habit and then she should be ok with you doing it following the same routine that he has established.

We switched it so I fed my son before bath and then just cuddled him to sleep and it worked really well.Good luck!

Thank you. I think that's probably the way we'll have to go. I'm just dreading biting the bullet and doing it. I know it's going to be an awful few days for all of us, probably.

They do but it’s not normal. Most children at 2 are sleeping through the night or waking once. 5/6 times is a newborn pattern and means they never enter deep sleep. It’s not good for their emotional regulation hence his meltdowns. Rested children are regulated children.

Thank you! I've read that milk usually dries up by twenty weeks and some toddlers will self wean. I've also read that some toddlers carry on dry-nursing and then tandem feeding, when the new baby arrives, which I definitely don't want to do.

It's so hard to know what the right thing is with babies.

Cold weather is fab for zonking kids out - in Nordic countries they wrap them up very warm and they sleep for hours outside. Can you get a good sturdy running buggy and pram mitts so your hands don’t freeze? It’s all about breaking the association between sleep and the item they rely on (boob in this case). Just been through a similarish struggle with my 6 year old who slept amazingly until DP moved into her room briefly so I could feed new DS in the night. We’ve done a gold sticker chart and now she’s falling asleep without one of us in the room she’s able to resettle.

I started with middle of the night wakes, so picking up and rocking back to sleep. When that was done then tackled the bf to sleep feed which did take a bit longer. We also tried cold turkey method with DH taking over and that worked for him after a few nights, but only for him and not for me, although my DC was older. Also weaning did not really make my DC fall asleep on their own or more quickly, I still had to sit and pat/cuddle etc.

I also say cold turkey, make sure the bottle is always on hand, whenever she reached for the boob give her the bottle. It will P her off but eventually she'll get the message.
Also change your top regularly esp at night time because she will be able to smell the breastmilk on your clothes.

We did it quite a bit later than 11 months but to break the feed to sleep cycle DH would rock DD to music, almost like dancing with her. She did cry the first couple of nights but was loved and held the whole time and after that she could sleep without needing to feed. I think it only works if it’s not the food source doing the rocking though! Can your partner (if you have one - sorry haven’t read whole thread but wanted to advise) take over bedtime to break the cycle?

I did the following, starting with night and still feeling to sleep for naps

if my husband was home he took over every bedtime, and rocked her to sleep while singing twinkle twinkle. It took up to half an hour some nights and there was crying

if he wasn’t home I started feeding to sleep, when she slowed down I unlatched stood up and carried on rocking her. There were tears again! I then progressed a couple of weeks later to not feeding at all

we did it very gently and it probably took a month in total but now she normally goes to sleep within about 5 mins of us rocking her both for naps and bedtime and when she wakes in the night.

Co-sleeping and contact napping almost 13 month old here, who also doesn’t know what a cot nap is @BudgetBuster (not for want of trying!).

Posting for solidarity and to read any tips!

It's only a newborn pattern if they only woke 5 or 6 times as a newborn. My boy woke 13+ times a night MINIMUM.

Just because your kid does things different, doesn't make others abnormal. I hope the view from your high horse is nice.

Mine took very well to changing to half a 360 Munchkin cup of warm cow's milk before bed around that age (although combination fed, and from about six months breastfeeding to sleep stopped working anyway!). I or DP would snuggle LO while they drank and read a story - now at 16 months it's milk and a story on our bed before teeth, pyjamas, bed.

Mg LO was a bit older but i started off with cutting out the first feed to sleep at bed time and just cuddled them. There were tears but maybe for 3/4 nights and it stopped. When they were happy with going to sleep woth cuddles at the start of the night i then stopped feeding to sleep for wake ups and they accpetrd cuddles without complaint. I actually dreaded it for so long and ot was suprisngly easy, was fully done with feeding in about a week. My LO also wake a similar amount of times a night... it is normal sleep and they are a very happy well adjusted 3 year old now who sleeps through 😊