Am I doing the wrong thing?

[redandyellowandpinkandgreen]

DS is 15 weeks and goes to bed at 7pm like clockwork. If he then wakes I feed him automatically without seeing if he can be settled in any other way. He is bf. It just seems like the lazy option! I latch him on and he falls back to sleep easily.

A couple of times I have tried patting him and not lifting him up and he will go back to sleep but it's a lot of effort, 15 minutes or so of patting and shushing or 5 minutes of feeding.

In the middle of the night I tend to do the easiest thing. The only exception is if it's perhaps only an hour or so since I last fed.

Do you think I should try and settle in other ways? I am just wondering if it will make life harder in the long run.

I think it depends on how often you are feeding during the night tbh. I don't blame you for doing the easiest thing, we've all done the same. At 15 weeks they still need feeding v regularly, but maybe longer term you just need to have an eye on the fact that you are feeding to sleep, and that he will eventually need to learn to settle to sleep on his own without a bf. Think I generally fed DD when she woke, but once I knew she could go, say, 3 hours without a feed, then if she woke at less than 3 hourly intervals I tried to settle her in other ways (watch out for growth spurts though). I know what you mean about a lot of effort, but feeding to sleep can be a pain to correct if it gets out of hand. Maybe try feeding and then rousing slightly before he goes back in the cot?

I normally feed about 11pm and then again about 3-4am ish I suppose. It's just really hard to guess what he wants when he wakes! I just try and do something with him before he starts crying.