My son is 11 months old and has, up to now, always fallen asleep while breastfeeding. This was not my choice – he just never went through that ‘drowsy but still awake’ stage at the end of a feed. He typically wakes twice during the night for a feed (around 11.30 and 4), and is always asleep by the end of it. He has therefore never learnt the skill of falling asleep by himself without being fed. But in the last few days this has stopped happening – he is still awake when he has finished feeding, and when I put him down in his cot he does not go back to sleep himself. I try and soothe him, but he just gets more and more awake and soon starts crying.
I knew the time would come sooner or later when he would have to learn how to fall asleep without being fed, and I had been preparing myself for having to ride out some long periods of soothing him back to sleep. But last night this went on for over two hours – picking him up and rocking him, putting him back down and soothing him – and in the end I had to feed him again to get him back to sleep. It now feels like I have lost the ability to get him to sleep – neither feeding nor soothing reliably works.
Any advice or experiences to share would be much appreciated.