How do I break feed to sleep?

[offbeatgirl]

Looking for some help here to fine-tune my bedtime routine in the hope of getting some longer spells of sleep! DS is seven and a half months old, breastfed, and has never been a good sleeper. At the moment he falls asleep very easily around 7.15-7.45, and then tends to wake after 3-4 hours, and then every two hours until around 6-7am. Occasionally he'll self-settle, or can be settled by sushing, whispering or a cuddle, but I usually need to feed him again. Sometimes he's wide awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night - we're currently experimenting with leaving him to his own devices when this happens unless he gets upset and maybe feeding him when he starts to get sleepy again after an hour, as our interventions only seemed to keep him awake longer. Daytime naps generally ok - down around 9.30 for 1-2 hours, and again around 2.30/3 for 1-2 hours.

Bedtime routine is currently dinner (around 6pm), bath, into sleeping bag, story, milk, bed (he sleeps in a travel cot by our bed - we haven't tried to move him to his own room yet, and there's no room for the cot bed in our room). I've been trying to put him down awake but sleepy after his milk, but he almost always seems to fall fast asleep on this feed. I don't want to pull him off the boob too early as I worry he'll only wake up soon after due to hunger. Would it make sense to move the feed to after dinner/ before bathtime? I worry that would be too close to dinner and might lead to bath-time indigestion, but I suspect that anytime post bath would lead to him falling asleep, and it seems wrong to wake him up in order to put him down to sleep!

Any suggestions gratefully received. I'm exhausted, DH is exhausted, and I suspect DS must be pretty tired too!

DS would only feed to sleep for a long time. I did the pantley pull off thing/white noise/routine but it didn't seem to make much difference, then suddenly at around 9 months we had a hunch he might be amenable to rocking to sleep so DH took over one evening and it worked. Since then he will go to sleep at bedtime for either of us, although I usually do it and mainly breastfeed him. In recent weeks we found he has been able to go to sleep with no feeds at all near bedtime as I've gone out for the day (he's 13 months and he doesn't drink milk from a bottle or beaker).

He still wakes at 10pm ish and has to be fed and then cosleeps all night with feeding when he wakes so that hasn't changed unfortunately. So basically I'm saying the amount and timing of the milk he's having (or not having) at bedtime haven't made any difference to how he sleeps. However being able to let someone else do bedtime occasionally is invaluable. Good luck.

Thanks Tinkerbell, it's helpful to hear how someone else fared with Pantley's methods - even if it's not the miracle solution I'd hoped for! It would certainly be progress if my husband could take a stint at settling DS to sleep at night. I've been out for one evening since my son was born, and returned at 9.30 to find both DH and DS frazzled. I haven't dared to leave the house in the evening since! I have a nasty feeling that I may just have to ride it out, as controlled crying approaches aren't for me.

Glad to hear things have improved a little for you anyway.

Yes DS was waking sometimes 3 times every evening and (fingers crossed) he suddenly is not waking mostly. it just seemed to be developmental though and happened when it happened rather than anything we did. I too tried to do Pantley strictly and it was just too hard and didn't really work but gave me a few tricks.

After a few frazzled evenings for DH (always had a worse evening when I went out for some reason) , grandparents babysat and had no problems at all, we got home at 11.30 and he hadn't woken up once. It will happen at some point.

I've always believed in doing what works. Some children take a very long time to drop feeds, sleep through, self soothe etc and if feeding/rocking to sleep maximises your sleep then stick with it.

Could someone explain what the Pantley methods are? I have the book on my Kindle but I am way too tired to plough through it!
I have a 4 month old and a 20 month old.

Co sleeping with 4 month old but she is becoming a bit of a night time milk feed and I'm aware I'm feeding to sleep as it's easiest. Now and then I think that maybe I should do something about it, then lose heart in the middle of the night!!

I'm in a similar boat with ds2. He's 6.5 months and at the start was a brilliant sleeper and would self soothe and pretty much do 8-9 hour stretches at night. I was really smug about it. And then he hit 4 months. Last week we moved him into his own room, and he's definitely stretched out his feeds since then (every 4-6 hours)—I think it might help that a) he doesn't hear my husband's snoring (!) and b) I don't hear him stir lightly and then jump up assuming he's going to need to feed. But he's still waking at about 12-1am and then 5-6am. I know he doesn't need to eat then, but feeding him is the easiest/quickest/quietest way of getting him back to sleep. I haven't figured out an alternative yet. But I would def suggest trying him in a separate room, at least for part of the night (I bring him to sleep with me when he wakes at 5-6am which I love) and am now thinking of trying to reduce the amount I feed him or possibly feed him water from a bottle (something the HV recommended). I'm also trying to let him self-soothe to sleep more regularly in the day time in his dog bed sleepyhead (he often drops off in the sling or car) so he remembers how to do so at night too... It's a habit that both he and me have to break, the feeding to sleep thing. Good luck!

Thanks everyone for the responses. Bright, my DH wants to move DS into his own room, so maybe we'll give it a trial this weekend. He thinks this means we'll wake DS less and he'll go longer between wakes, I worry that I'll get less sleep traipsing from room to room. I guess there's only one way to find out...

Lilipot, the key ingredient to the Pantley method appears to be the pull off tactic - the idea is that you start to feed you baby, and then when his/her sucks slow down you gently pull him/her off the boob by breaking the suction with your finger. If s/he protests too much you out him/her back on, and then try again. The idea is to get baby accustomed to not falling asleep on boob. I struggle with this because DS is such a quick guzzler that I find it difficult to identify when to remove him, and because he's so tired at bedtime that he tends to fall asleep on the boob whatever I do, but I do try this in the night if his last wake was less than 3 hours ago. There's a bunch of other advice there which you may well have tried already (e.g. feed frequently in the day; getting baby happy in cot if you're not co-sleeping by encouraging him/her to play there in the day briefly; introducing a comfort item; use white noise)

Watching with interest as mine slept great at start, but now in the middle ofvwhat i think is 4month sleep regression. However the last week ds seems to have improved. I dont know if this will help as your dc is older, but what ive noticed so far : ds actually gets really grumpy and vocal grunty (not crying) actualy just before hes about to drop off and rather than pickinv him up, if i gently sing to him it calms him enough to drop off. I will have to do this 2-3 times though as he fights sleep. Also he was too cold and wont tolerate a blanket/swaddle/slerping bag so i put him in a vest, babygrow, socks, scratch mits and a light jumper or cardi. He also likes to hold onto a blanket and rub it on his face to comfort him to sleep. So what ive been doing that seems to work at the moment is: bath, changed into vest and babygrow. Into bedroom (ours with his cot) read a story or relaxing play such as nightime projector and singing/rhymes lying down together. Breastfeed untill he comes off and wont take anymore. Winded and sat up for 10 mins (hes sick otherwise) then down in cot. He lats there happy but awake for about 30-40 mins (i usually lie in bed and read a book or whatever) thrn he starts his sleepy groan. I then put his cardi and mits etc on, put him down holding blankie and sing and shh till hes happy again. Then leave him. If he moans again i repeat and he eventually falls asleep. So far hes normall sleeping 8-9 hour stretch after this, once he has woke for a boob feed but gone straight back down. Also before i was waking up because i thought he was going to wake but he was asleep but shuffling about for a good hour before waking

Offbeat - thanks, it was the pull off I'd heard about. I think my issue is that I very readily feed her in the night as it's what works! For now I think we'll carry on as lots going on and I need my sleep, but will bear it in mind.

Hey - I had similar concerns (ds now 16 months). I wanted to say hang in there and don't stress too much. The routine will evolve naturally . I was doing a feed to sleep until ds was a year old because it was the only thing that would get him to sleep.pattern and we also gave him a formula bottle in the middle of the night for a while because he was indicating that he was hungry. But eventually it just fizzled out. Now he has dinner, bath, milk and water toothbrush then story and cuddle and nursery rhyme tunes to sleep. I haven't mastered the getting him to sleep without a cuddle but he just became less bothered about the boob (and started biting me!) . He also started sleeping better - still not brilliant but we get the occasional sleep through. So try and enjoy it as he'll have grown up before you know it!

Monkey, I have to admit that I enjoy some of the night feeds (when I'm not too tired). DS is such a little cutie when he falls asleep during a feed and can be picked up, cuddled, and placed back in his cot and straight back to sleep. When the wakes/feeds are spaced every 3-4 hours I'm ok with it. Nor do I want to completely night wean him - I'm returning to work in January and suspect he'll take more milk at night and less in the day at nursery. It just gets a bit much when it's every 1-2, hours, or he decides it's time for a wide awake spell in the middle of the night. If I was confident he'd grow out of it, I would relax. Perhaps I should be trying a pull off / other method of getting him back to sleep when his last week has been less than 3 hours before. Spilly, I do sometimes find that singing a repetitive song softly to DS will help send him to sleep. My problem is that he almost always comes off the bedtime feed fast asleep, so short of going out of my way to wake him up (and I do try picking him up and gently rubbing / patting his back) it's hard to give him opportunities to learn to self-settle after this feed. It seems a bit counterintuitive to wake him up when he's asleep just to teach him to fall asleep again

Watching with interest. I have a very similar situation. Our dc(2) has finally started sleeping through the night so I would love a full night of solid sleep. I'm beginning to get really grumpy because of the lack of sleep and not having any time to myself even after a successful bedtime