feeding to sleep-pls answer if you do/did this..

[Scarlett175]

DD is 15 weeks old and since a tiny baby has always bf to sleep at bedtime- started to be honest because she would naturally fall asleep on the boob and there was no way i would wake her. She can fall asleep in daytime without the boob- she does this in pram/sling and does a little cry but no big deal. At night though her routine is playtime with dad, bath, cuddle BF with mum then we take her to our room asleep and place her in cot. She sleeps well, minimum of 4/5 hours and sometimes up to 8 hours though she has had a few blips where she woke every 2 hours on the whole the nights are okay.

So my question is, after the blip week where she was waking 2 hourly and then i was having to feed her back to sleep as nothing else would soothe her, would you use this method again, and how did it stop... guess i was thinking when she weans the bf to sleep would end, but as i want to continue bf for longer this might not be the case.

have i made a rod for my own back!!!

I fed DD1 to sleep until she got to the point that she wasn't totally asleep after feeding. I think it was at around 8 months. We then started to space out the last feed from when she went into her cot gradually and after a few months she never fed to sleep again and its never been an issue.

Now she has her bath, some milk, brush teeth, cuddle/story and then bed.

At about 15 weeks I would still absolutely feed her back to sleep in the night. I would try to just reassure and soothe her first but would always resort to boob if nothing else works. For me it was about self preservation!! It honestly hasn't caused us any problems

I'm still feeding to sleep at 10.5 months...DS still doesn't sleep through the night, though, and that may be the reason why. But it's my magic bullet to a peaceful evening.

I fed DS to sleep until he was probably about 8 months old. He's now 3.3 and he's a wonderful sleeper who settles really well on his own. Don't worry about making a rod for your own back - I worried about it but in retrospect it was the right thing to do, very natural and it hasn't caused any problems.

I bf dd1 to sleep until she was about 13 months and I bf dd2 to sleep until she was about 20 months.
Basically I did it as logn as I fed them, hey, it's a brilliant way to get them to sleep, why not use it!

DD2 could self settle from 4 or 5 months and dd1 from about 7-8 months, but BFing at night worked instantly so I used it as and when I needed to.

I'm doing it with 7 m.o. DS. I wouldn't be without it. He can't self-settle yet, but will eventually.

Even when he had a spell of self-settling for naps (which he's since stopped doing it was really useful to be able to feed him to sleep if he was overtired and shrieky.

I would definitely use this again. After 2 weeks DS wouldn't feed to sleep until he was 3 months old. That time was hideous.

As I say to the people who spout the rod for your own back thing, it's my rod, my back.

Feeding to sleep is natural - nature's way of making us mums sleepy and babies sleepy (when it works of course). In the nights were DS woke loads but I didn't feed to sleep (I thought it was the wrong thing to do), I felt terrible the next day. When he did feed to sleep, it was a lot easier to deal with when he sleeping close to me as wouldn't quite wake up to do it.

DS is 10 months and I still feed to sleep. All that gumpf about babies waking in the night and not being able to self settle - well at 4/5 months before we'd even tried to teach DS to self settle, he started to put himself back to sleep (I used to lay there pretending to be asleep and he'd babble then drift off again. The first time it happened it was like magic).

He did have a couple of months where he'd self settle very easily - take off boob, pop in cot and he'd mess about then drift off. Since teething, learning to crawl, starting to walk (well he's taken a couple of steps!), he's just been too excited. So I do try but if it doesn't work I'll just feed/rock to sleep. Interestingly, if he wakes at night but isn't hungry he will go back to sleep unaided - you hear him over the monitor chatting away then he drifts off

Feeding to sleep is a great parenting tool, not to be shirked at!

okay I'll edit that bit about when he wakes - if he's not hungry/teething/no wind then he'll go back to sleep . basically if nothing's wrong. Which makes me believe that he needs to feed to sleep for comfort as well as food.

Still feed to sleep at 3y2mo! Works for us.

You made a rod for your own back when you got pregnant - life is a lot easier when you don't have children :o

Having made the rod now you just have to work with it.

I feed dd2 to sleep in the evening and did the same with dd1. It is something of a rod, in that nobody else can put dd2 to bed at that time (as we discovered when I had to leave a wedding the other day to come back and feed her).

Personally I have found feeding to sleep so lovely and effective that I think it would be crazy not to do it - I consider it to be one of the best tools in my baby- comforting toolbox.

I don't feed to sleep for daytime sleeps either - just pop baby into the cot when she's tired and off she goes. I think this helps with not creating an absolute association between breast and sleeping.

With both girls they just gradually stopped being so totally asleep after their feed. DD2 is 6mos now and a lot of evenings she's still awake when I put her down - often drowsy from the feed, but sometimes not. It still seems to work its magic though and she drops off soon afterwards.

I never had any problems with DD1 and getting her to sleep when I stopped feeding (14 mos). DH started putting her to bed for a while and she didn't mind in the least.

You could ask your DH to do bedtime occasionally if you want to be sure that someone else can put her to bed if you're not there. Or you can do what I'm planning and just work things out so you're always there.

Embrace the rod! :o

fed ds1 to sleep till he was about 3 years old, then taught him to self settle
ds2 (age 2) is fed to sleep often, but will self settle a little more than ds1 did, i could see him being ready to learn to do this most nights, before ds1 did

don't worry about it! if it working now, don't change it
if it is NOT suiting you, change something
i would also stop discussing your parenting methods with people who aren't supportive
it makes a big difference

God! I wish I'd never heard that phrase about rods and backs! It caused me so much worry in the early days with DS.

We finally just relaxed and did whatever was best at the time. DS has, at various times, been fed to sleep, slept in our bed, been 'walked' to sleep in the pram (in the early days) etc etc

At 18 months, all being well with teeth etc, he goes in his cot and falls asleep within half an hour. Sometimes within 5 minutes. On a good night, he sings and talks himself to sleep. On a bad night he grumbles for a few minutes before cuddling his teddy.

There you go! Another thing frowned on by some people: a teddy!

Do whatever gets you through, and remember that EVERYTHING is transient. Everything is just a stage, and it will change next week! :)

Actually picc, thinking back, that was how I started to help DS to settle himself - I put a blanket between him and me when he was feeding and 3 years on that's still his comfort blanket.

Fed to sleep until about a year, when DS started to enjoy being read/sung to at night and learnt to nod off during songs or book. It took him a while to sleep consistently through the night - it used to be quite sporadic but looking back, I realise that it was almost certainly teething-issues, for which bfing is a great painkiller, of course, hence the night feeds. The moment all his molars were through, he suddenly slept through every night. I feel quite glad, looking back, that I didn't deny him the nightfeeds, even when it did get tiring (although I do understand if others feel differently).

I've had two very different experiences with this - and two extremely different children!
DD1 fed to sleep but was a nightmare sleeper and I know a lot of my friends blamed my feeding her to sleep on this as when I was pregnant with DD2 they kept going on about how I would do things differently this time around. I honestly thought I might - as there was no way I could cope with the lack of sleep and drama DD1 put us through by making the same 'mistakes' again. Turned out that there was no way I could wake my gorgeous little baby once she had fallen asleep on the boob and I went with it - and she is a wonderful sleeper in spite of it all!
Now, at 9 months, she most often tend not to fall asleep anymore after the last feed evening feed and enjoys a book and a cuddle before going into her cot and watching her mobile for a bit before going to sleep by herself. And she sleeps through the night, too.
It is the most amazing tool and I think that the problem sleepers are problem sleeper - whether they are fed to sleep or not. They probably just go to sleep more easily with the feed than they would've without it.

thanks so much for all the responses... it IS working for us right now so I am enjoying the cuddles, and her daddy put her to bed thursday night whilst I had dinner with the girls- took a bit longer but no problem in the end so I think I am panicking over nothing.

I think it still surprises me how much I enjoy the closeness of feeding her- before she arrived I though i would be all routine and CC.... now I'm a happy bucket of mush!!!

x

I would keep going Scarlett if it works then keep going. And please ignore anyone that uses the "Rod and back" phrase. I fed DD to sleep up until 9 months when unfortunately I had to give up breast feeding. For about a month I cuddled and rocked to sleep after her bottle, then during the hot weather she was getting all hot and fidgety so one night I said goodnight kissed her head and popped her in her cot. She chatted to herself for while and then went off, and has done for the past 5 weeks.
If it works keep going, don't worry about the rod and back issues, as tomorrow is another day and IF you have issues in the future, cross that bridge if and when you come to it. Enjoy your LO they grow all too fast.

Scarlett175 - me too! It's amazing how you think you know yourself and then find out you're someone quite different.