please help - how do I cure cot phobic baby and stop breastfeeding?

[mcnab]

Please share any experiences/advice, I'm feeling like a right failure as a mum at the moment and getting a bit down about it all :-( - 2 main connected issues sleep and breastfeeds.
SLEEP - My 10 month old only sleeps in her buggy/car during the day and has 2x30/40mins sleeps. She goes totally mad if I try to put her in the cot during the day. I was ok with this as she used to settle well at night (aka fell asleep whilst breastfeeding and went straight down). Now she doesn't and it's taking me around 60-90 mins to get her to sleep after putting her down at 7pm after her breastfeed. I do the wind down routine, tea, bath, story, cuddle, breastfeed, dark room and she is fine until I put her in the cot. Have tried patting, picking up/put down, leaving for a minute then returning. She is distressed and I am too - how can we get over this? Often she continues to cry in my arms, I can't seem to sooth her. The only thing that seems to work is letting her suck away on me for the time but this has to stop. She normally wakes once in the night and I have to feed her back to sleep (which I want to stop - see below). PLEASE HELP!
BREASTFEEDS - I need to wean her off now as I'm due back to work in 2 months time. We had cut back to 3 feeds a day but a recent bout of gastro-interitisis (sp?!) ended that and she's back to demand feeding (around 5 xs a day). Previously tried formula (every day for 1 week) and she hated it, spat it out and refused it. I guess I feel that the sleep is already so fragile that I'm worried about making things worse. Should I cut out the daytime ones and offer a snack instead. Have tried stopping morning one again and she tugs on my top, cries/clingy until I give in (hate seeing her upset).
Our day is:
6am wake + bf, 7.30 breakfast, 30mins nap somewhere between 9-10am, 10.30 bf, 12pm lunch, 40mins nap somewhere between 1pm-2pm, 2pm bf, 3.30pm snack+ drink, 5pm-5.30pm tea, 6.15pm bath
6.45 bf, 7pm attempt to put to bed. Never really asleep before 8pm/8.30pm.
I don't know which issue to tackle first. Feel like a big black cloud is over me when I should just be enjoying my beautiful daughter. Probably the sleep one and then the breastfeeding? Any tips please?

hi mcnab, dont really have any advice but wanted to let you know am thinking of you, i also have 10 month daughter, when my hv visited a month ago she suggested giving up the lunch time breast feed before any other feed, tbh i cant really say if it was successful as i didnt try out her (unasked for ) advice but some days my dd doesnt have this feed at all but she always has morning/evening feed, hv also advised offerring water during night instead (i tried it once and dd screamed her head off so went back to feeding her - i just let her stay in bed with us once she wakes up and i tend to fall asleep whilst feeding) sorry i cant be of any more help - let me know how you get on

Well what I am going to suggest is what worked for us, but I know it isn't for everyone. We had a very similar problem in terms of the settling at bedtime with our DD (funnily enough at around the 10 month mark too). Like you, she would no longer feed to sleep and rocking, patting etc just seemed to wind her up. We also had the same problem when she woke in the night. Eventually after doing some reading etc I came to the conclusion that she had forgotten how to soothe herself to sleep. So we put her down after doing the bedtime routine and we left her. She wasn't hysterical, just crying on an off. First night took about 35 mins, 2nd night 20 mins 3rd night 10 and within a week she was settling down without any crying. She will often settle herself if she wakes in the night too, but if not I will go in and I do still feed her (she is 14 months now).

If this sounds too harsh to you, I know that some people use a method of gradually moving a bit further from the cot each night until they can leave the room.

DD is a very happy and secure baby, not shy or clingy and generally very happy to go in her cot at night and for naps now.

Hi Mandy mac, did you leave your baby without going back in at all, or do cc after a few mins etc?
Last night was pretty bad, I resorted to climbing in her cot at 5am as I'd read this can reassure them. She was fine until I went to move her off the breast then she'd go mad everytime.
Am going to give cc a go on Sunday night. Ready to try something new. Will let you know how we go.
On a good note I managed to drop mid morn bf yesterday and plannig to keep it off over the weekend so will be down to 3 a day + emergency night feeds.

Hi McNab
We didn't do classic CC (going back in at increasing intervals), to be honest I really felt that this would be more to make me feel better than to help her. I was worried that going in would be a bit like starting from the beginning again each time, and that it was better to bite the bullet and just leave her. To me it felt mean going in to her and then walking out again. So yes we just left her. It wasn't easy - DH and I really had to support each other. But I was confident in myself that I was doing it for the right reasons (that she needed the sleep, not just that I did ) and that it did need doing and that helped me.

Regarding the breastfeeding, I went back to work when DD was 7 months and she had been exclusively breastfed until then. She wouldn't take a bottle of EBM before she started, but we had got her drinking water from a bottle/beaker thingy and this is what we gave nursery to give her EBM in and she was fine. I didn't cut down feeds before she started, as I then expressed at work instead of feeding. I realise this may well not be practical for you. But just to say that she may well take a bottle at nursery, even if she won't at home.

Good luck with the CC on Sunday - let me know how you get on.

Well some progress to report. CC going well so far. Down to 30mins of screaming before falling asleep and slept through since then too. We're only going in 2-3 times in those 30mins and keeping min contact just to reassure but not reward her. Feeling like I'm regaining some control and it feels great!

Still on 3 feeds. Planning to give the night time settling/cc another week to embed and then try to tackle daytime sleeps.

lol at thought of you climbing in cot with her, I assume it's quite a big one!

Hope cc goes well tonight for you, it's v. hard but worth it.

I really know how much the sleep thing can affect you after getting through just under 2 yrs before my ds2 grew out of his reflux but please don't do CC with this little one, who seems like she needs lots of reassurance. I would really recommend these books:
The No-cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night
or No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers . Just read the reviews to see how good they can be - loads of ideas that you can adapt to your own situation, including ideas for gently cutting out those bedtime or night-time breastfeeds. Unfortunately my copy has already been lent out to someone but you may be able to get one from your library or on ReadItSwapIt (which is my new fave website ).

my current recommendation. Brilliant book!