Is it possible to carry on feeding to sleep for naps but teach self settling at bedtime/in night?

[ilovetosleep]

DS2 is 11 months, and a horrific sleeper. Wakes every 90 mins between 7-7 and will only re settle with a feed. It's really impacting on his eating and he barely eats solids during the day. He's almost one and we really need to reverse his calorie intake.

So last night I started gradual retreat. He was asleep in exactly one hour. However he still woke every 90 mins. I have decided for the first few nights I will still feed, then start to reduce the feeds, then next weekend I will try settling in his cot.

However, I know for this to work he needs as many calories as poss during the day. He is a very busy little boy and not that interested in bf during the day. Feeding to sleep for his two naps are a surefire way to get two full boobs worth of milk in him but obviously contradicts what we are trying to do at bedtime. Is this going to be too confusing for him? I have read somewhere that the brain operates differently for naps/night sleep but don't know if I imagined it/if it will work in practice.

Anyone managed this? Would also appreciate any tips for the night weaning. We are going for a mish mash of jay gordon and Andrea Grace - v similar methods where the first few nights you still feed but aim to put down awake, then shorten the feeds then eventually cut all feeds.

Thanks in advance.

Yep! We've done this with our 7 month old DD. We soon realised that even though she would wake hourly and feed, she was obviously doing it for comfort more than hunger.

DD was 6 months when we started and by the 3rd night of my OH doing night time wakings, she was sleeping through. If we are in the house, I feed her to sleep for naps, however, if we're out she will fall asleep in the car/pram.

It is doable. We did CC insofar as we won't pick her up if she cries but we will just repeat "it's bedtime now, just close your eyes and go to sleep" and she soon drifts off. But she very rarely wakes now once she is asleep in her cot. It can take anywhere between a few minutes to an hour for her to drift off depending on whether we get her to bed before she's overtired.

Sorry if this is a but higgledy piggledy, I'm typing with one hand as DD is currently asleep on me :-)

We did the same as the PP. We tackled night time sleep first also with a version of controlled crying - we never left her to cry alone and picked her up if she was really upset. We then moved on to napping in the cot by using a mini bedtime routine for naps. We're not completely there yet but things are massively improved. Sometimes she sleeps 12 hours straight and others she might wake up 1 or 2 times. Teething is definitely throwing a spanner in the works!
Good luck

Not the same situation at all, but we did the opposite and fed to sleep in the evening but not naps because of DS's reflux. (For some reason he would wake 20 minutes into a nap in pain if we fed to sleep but just conked out in the evening.) So I do think they can get used to settling in different ways at different times.

Just to say, we did what you're suggesting and it totally worked. Fed to sleep for naps (in order to get max napping time as he kept waking up hungry) and then did a proper, non food-related bedtime and dropped all nighttime feeds.

We did this around 7 months and DS was settled very quickly - he went from feeding all night (maybe 3-4 times as I was too tired to fight it) to no feeds from 7pm-7am. He was also a lot happier in the day as getting so much more sleep. It helps if you can get someone else to see to them in the night, my mum helped and he would go straight back to sleep for her.

Thanks for all the replies. Well that's the plan we are going with, bedtimes seem to be improving v quickly and I even managed one resettle in the cot last night. But that was followed by 4x wake ups to feed. I am shortening the feeds each night but it's not easy...