Transitioning to self settling (9mo)

[dmuk]

We have spent the past month trying to smoothly transition our 9mo into self settling herself to sleep.

She's breastfed and always needs the breast to fall asleep. During the day she can fall a sleep in the carrier. Predominately she needs the breast, even if it's for a couple of minutes. We believe it's not a hunger thing.

We're trying to break the feed-sleep association and encourage self settling. The reason being she is waking on a regular basis during the night.

She usually has two 30-45 mins naps during the day. We have quite en established routine in the evenings - play > feed > quiet play > bath > cot time > sleep.

We are getting to the point where if we refuse the breast, she cries uncontrollably. We are reluctant to let her cry it out - however many people are advising this.

Any tips?

Do we persevere with the routine and try and lessen the BF? Or let her cry it out? Is it an age/weather/cot thing?

Is self settling going to reduce the regular waking up during the night?

Hi dmuk

I completely understand how stressful it can be rocking/feeding to sleep. A few months ago I was doing just that.

There are alot of arguments against CC, however, I was desperate and I couldn't hack the hours spent rocking my daughter to sleep for hours each night so I did use the CC method. It worked wonders in the sense that now she self settles beautifully, I can put her down for each nap and at bedtime very happy and she will fall asleep within a few minutes without a peep.
However, it hasnt made a difference to her night wakings, she still wakes 2-3 sometimes 4 times a night, often for reassurance or a small feed but I can still put her down awake each time.

so, its difficult to know what to suggest, im sorry I couldn't be much help but do know how your feeling! LO is also 9 months btw x

With DD1 we were rocking to sleep standing up which by 9m was almost impossible!

Firstly I rocked her sitting on the bed, so more like juggling. Then we moved to her lying on the bed next to me with my hand on her chest, maybe rocking her a bit like that. Then we put her in the cot and sat next to her with a hand on her chest.

There were tears but by 9m I was confident they were angry tears not hungry / wet / unloved tears. And I was sat right next to her, she knew she hadn't been abandoned.

She's 2.5 now and still wakes once in the night to come into our bed but I don't have to do anything huge improvement!

Oops, jiggling not juggling. She was too heavy to rock, I certainly wasn't chucking her up in the air!

Is it a problem feeding to sleep? I tried to stop feeding my eldest to sleep, which she did for a while, problem then that nothing else was as effective at getting her to sleep. Settled into a pattern of 2 night wakings, quick 10nin feeds them back to sleep, slept through from 18 months. This time round with dd2 I'm just going with the flow, far less stressful!

We used cc when our LO was 6 months. Once he could self settle naps and bedtimes became a lot easier, though as the previous poster said, it didn't make a massive difference to waking in the night. As he was bfed, we had to swap over the last feed and bath time for a week so he wasn't dropping off on the boob!

Thanks for the responses.

We don't mind the occasional night time waking or feeds. It's just for the past few weeks it's been almost every 1 - 2 hours (!). Our hope is that if we can encourage the self settling, it will eliminate some of the night time interventions.

We'll keep persevering!

Have you read about the 9 month sleep regression. At 9 months she has a huge amount going on developmentally - crawling, standing, cruising, clapping, waving etc - and her little brain is just whirring away. It might be a reason for the increase in night wakings.

I have a breastfed LO who doesn't feed to sleep, he settles himself for naps and at bedtime. He still wakes very frequently overnight for a feed or a pat or when he wants to party. I'm not sure the two things are related. Feeding to sleep is quite a useful tool to have in your arsenal. Hope sleep improves for you soon.