BF to sleep - bad habit? How do I break it? 3mo.

[IceNoSlice]

Hi, i'd love some advice. As the title says, really.

LO wakes up every 3-4 hours at night. I'd love to lengthen that sleep time! Current bed time routine is working pretty well in that DH and I have an evening. And LO will usually go back to sleep pretty easily after a night feed.

My problems are:
1.wind. When he feeds to sleep I move him to an upright position and pat his back for a bit before putting him back in his cot. Sometimes this results in a burp, sometimes not. Am I making his sleep worse by not winding him properly?

1. Sleep association with breast feeding. How bad is it that he associates sleep with BF? What can I do to change this?

Thanks in advance, any advice would be helpful!

all sounds perfectly normal - 3 or 4 hours is good going. (many people don't even get that)

you don't need to burp

it is not bad AT ALL that he associates sleep with BF - that is the beauty of BF! lots of lovely sleep hormones to get them back off easily

if you decided NOT to feed back to sleep, you would have a right song and dance on your hands every 3 or 4 hours when he wakes (what would you do? feed until he is nearly asleep, then make sure he is awake when you put him down?? madness!)

you are doing fine - if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it

If you have a good latch you shouldn't need to burp him.

Wait until he's doing the "feathery" suckling and then try using your little finger in the corner of his mouth to break the seal.

I'd suggest you take a look at Elizabeth Pantley's "No Cry Sleep Solution".

My DS is 11 months next week. We co-sleep. When I break the seal he rolls over and nods off. Took a while to get there though. I'm afraid his longest stretch of sleep is 3 hours. It's every 90 minutes to 2 hours after that generally.

If you see a problem with feeding to sleep, then change it, but if you're happy, then keep it up! It's just whether you still want to be feeding him to sleep in several months time.

I still bf DD to sleep and she's 17 months! It's great, because she falls asleep in less than 10 mins and i can race downstairs to watch TV and eat chocolate get stuff done.

I'd stopped bfing by now with both DSs and it used to take me up to an hour to get them off to sleep in the evening at this age.

Oh, and though I am still bfing DD during the night (and want to stop) she has recently (now that teething seems to be taking a break) had several nights where she sleeps for a 7 hour stretch - so I think that is improving naturally.

Thanks for the advice all. I'll carry on as I am then