Your experience with feeding to sleep

[Rosiep10]

Please help me stop sending myself insane. My new DS (13 weeks) is a calm contented happy baby 90 per cent of the time. The exception is at nap and bedtime. He's a screamer - even if I pop him in his cot as soon as he yawns he's crying.

I've tried everything - rocking him to sleepy then putting him down, sssh-pat in the cot, leaving him for a few minutes to grizzle - every time he escalates pretty quickly to full scale screaming.

The only thing that works is feeding him until he nods off. He then sleeps beautifully, sometimes right through until morning.

I have no problem with this EXCEPT that everything I read says feeding to sleep is a Terrible Sleep Sin and by five months my baby will be awake every hour and he will never learn to go to sleep on his own and be sharing a bed with me when he's four.

Can you help me by sharing your experience? I feel really caught between a rock and a hard place. I love the calm and peace of feeding him down at bedtime but I feel like I am creating a world of pain for the future. He's so small I cannot leave him to cry but I feel like I am getting everything wrong and it's really making my head hurt.

I have a four year old too so lots of crying at bedtime isn't helpful for her when she's trying to sleep. She self settled quite early (thumb sucker) so this one is a different kettle of fish.

I feed my LO to sleep but now having real trouble transferring her to her cot due to my short stature.

Both of mine fed to sleep. I'm totally confused by the obsession with not feeding to sleep: there are sleep hormones in breast milk- it is designed to make them sleepy!

DS1- stopped of his own accord around six months and let me put him down sleepy but awake. DS2- made decision to stop feeding to sleep when he was about a year as he became a bugger to transfer. Neither did the waking every hour needing to be fed back to sleep thing. If it works- don't worry about it. Deal with it when/if it becomes a problem.

Thanks for posting this OP as I've been having the same worries. DS is 4mo and I've always fed him to sleep. His sleep is up and down, some nights he sleeps for 8 hrs and some nights he's up 3 times so like you I worry that I'm making things more difficult for myself.

To those of you who said you did it for a while: what happened when you had to stay away for a night? It's my close friends hen do at the end of April and I'll be away for one night, DS does take a bottle of expressed milk in the day but will he fall asleep the same way with a bottle?

Stop reading! babies are meant to fall asleep while BF it also sends mum to sleep - perfect!

All of mine fed to sleep until they chose other methods.

@Shadow1986

Until they have lots of teeth and you have to start worrying about tooth decay from the milk, you really don’t need to worry about it - do whatever makes your life easier.
My understanding is that night time bf is not a dental decay problem like bottle feeding is because the methods of delivery are so different (when bf the milk is deep in the mouth).
kellymom.com/ages/older-infant/tooth-decay/

I didn't stay away from DD at night until she stopped feeding to sleep. She then went through a phase of not feeding to sleep at nedtome anymore but still waking once in night and at that point needed feeding bsvk to sleep. Once during that period I went to a wedding in another town but made sure I was back by 1am as 2am was the earliest she ever woke. I did similar for a night out once, but on that occasion I also wasn't far from home so DP could have called and I'd have been hone within 15 mins.

I did this with my dc. Eldest is 12. I’m relieved to say he doesn’t rely on this any more. We did it until things changed and the dc became more active at bedtime. It was fine

You have to do whatever works for you. I fed to sleep but my first born had a huge four month sleep regression from 12 weeks and went from sleeping for 7hrs a stretch to waking every 45 mins. I'd feed for 15 mins hold her upright (reflux) for 20 mins else it'd all come back up then lie down just in time for her to wake again and the only way I could get her to settle was to feed her. Two weeks of that nearly broke me, I honestly despised my partner and resented the fact there was only me that could do it (as she refused bottles). It was so tough. I moved to a feeding schedule and shh-pat/singing and broke the boob reliance in about 6 weeks without too much screaming and no cry it out by 6 months she was reliably sleeping without being boobed to sleep and my mental health took a turn for the better.
Conversely I've got friends that breast fed their babies to sleep and they slept through from a few weeks old and weren't bothered by typical regressions/growth spurts and friends that boobed to sleep during the regressions but they passed in a couple of weeks and they're still feeding to sleep now.
It's down to the baby and you. I persisted til I broke down crying publicly in a shop because some kids were screaming at each other and realised that I couldn't go on (I didn't even get the Percy pigs I was after to make me feel better - I just fled in a wave of tears and snot!) if it works now and takes a dive like it did for me there are ways to break the habit and these phases don't last forever. I have to say I'm pregnant with no2 now and will feed to sleep/on demand for the first 3 months but then I'll be implementing a routine and transitioning from feeding to sleep as I won't be able to handle my 14 month old and a new baby while I'm as knackered as I was then.

Trust your own instinct and try to stop reading so much (difficult i know though) I drive myself mad in the early months following every else's adivce and rules. I remember also being with DS not to let him sleep on the boob, but he wouldn't settle any other way so in the end just let it happen. He slept easily wth bottle too if i wasn't home to settle him.
Sleep times became easier for all of us, and less stressful.
Eventually things sorted themselves and he goes to sleep himself. Agree having some sort of bed routine at some point later, but we still fed to sleep afterwards.

**Waddlelikeapenguin

In the first post, the OP just said feeding to sleep, I didn’t know that meant breastfeeding when I responded. Mine used to feed to sleep, but on a bottle.

@Shadow1986
My sincere apologies you are quite right i made the assumption that OP meant BF to sleep
i think it was the in my bed until 4 type comment that made me make the leap - i have bfing cosleepers!

**Waddlelikeapenguin

That’s OK it was a good point to make as your quite right if the OP is breastfeeding the whole tooth decay thing isn’t so much of a problem!

I did for both of mine- was a god send! Stopped working at some point but then you find a new strategy but couldn’t have fine without it for first 6 - 9 months with mine!

For a bit of balance, my DS now nearly 3 would not feed to sleep as a baby due to my oversupply and fast let down, he has been a nightmare at times anyway.
DD has fed to sleep happily and so far I've slept more than I did the first time (she was ill recently and things haven't been great since but this too shall pass)
I think you either get a sleeper or not and that will change with their age too, do whatever works!

I feed to sleep, dc is almost nine months now and still feeds to sleep at night sometimes nods off at boob during the day.

At night she wakes once for a feed and sleeps thro.

During the day she sleeps if we go out but objects strongly to napping as she wants to be involved with life not sleeping. I think that’s just her personality tho.

I can’t let dd cry I’m fine with breastfeeding her to sleep at night. I’m sure she’ll stop needing the comfort of being fed to sleep when she’s ready.

Yes, you might create a bit of a rod for your own back, but you have a problem which needs solving now. Feeding to sleep (two DCs) was incredibly useful and IME you can always sort these sorts of things out later.I tried for perfection with my first, I threw the rulebooks out for my second. Enjoy your baby.

I bfed DS to sleep. I kept reading that he should learn to settle by himself and to put down drowsy etc but it didn't work and I'd pick him straight back up as soon as he cried. It really is true that they do it by themselves naturally when they're ready! DS at around 14/15mths would pull off and allow me to put him in his cot, he'd then roll over and go to sleep. He's now almost 21 months and has just stopped bfing before sleep (his choice, not mine 😪) and I just put him in his cot and he is asleep within a couple of minutes. I wasted so much time reading up on sleep consultants and worrying that I shouldn't bf to sleep. They really do settle themselves when they're good and ready!!

Thanks so much to all of you for taking the time to reply. I feel much better! And will throw out the sleep books. I do have a sneaking suspicion that all the fuss about feeding to sleep is created by sleep consultants looking to sell their services, and far fewer people have issues with it than they suggest.

I'll stick with it for now and see what happens with the four month regression. I actually love feeding him to sleep, it's so peaceful and calm - I just can't imagine coping with a baby who wakes every hour of the night when I have another child to look after. But it seems like this doesn't happen to everyone so I'll stop stressing and cross that bridge when I get to it!

I think the key thing is baby sleep is a myth and there's definitely money to be made from peddling it! It's ever shifting goalposts as they go through so much that can affect them; teething, massive neurological development, illness etc so even once my daughter started to sleep through we've still have a week or so here and there that she's woken multiple times a night (she currently has bronchitis and even though she's sleeping through her coughing fits for the most part - I am not!)

Feed to sleep worked til it didn't and then we found other tactics. You'll find your own way.

Since having my baby the only advice I will give any expectant parents is to ignore everyone else's advice!
Best of luck!

I still feed my DD(3) to sleep almost every night, and for naps, which are few and far between nowadays. She went through a spell of not being able to nap, and feeding was the only way to settle her, and I would have rathered that than her not nap at all. In the grand scheme of things they are little for such a short time, so it’s not going to be forever.

My older DS was on and off about getting to sleep. I think it mostly depended on whether he was hungry/thirsty just before he wanted to go to sleep so as his routine changed to include fewer naps, more solid food and fewer breastfeeds sometimes that coincided and sometimes it didn't.

One downside I have found with both sons is that they don't wind well when sleepy/asleep after a feed so if I put them down flat for third first nightime sleep, they can get uncomfortable quite quickly and awaken upset about trying to get a burp out. Daytime naps are in a chair so they're more upright and it doesn't affect them and overnight feeds tend to be slower with less air taken in so also not affected but I do try to put them to sleep in other ways at bedtime. The oldest one liked being jiggled on my knee or having his bottom patted and the little one likes being burped to sleep so I can wake him up, burp him and just keep going until he nods off.

The only book I would recommend is The No Cry Sleep Solution by Elizabeth Pantley. It's great for breastfeeding mums and advocates very gentle habits that can promote good sleep.
She also describes the "Pantley pull-off". It's worked really well for us as a way to move on from hours of comfort sucking. It's a technique where you gently unlatch your baby when their sucking slows down and they are no longer feeding, just having what I call a jolly nice "binking session". You then apply gentle pressure with your finger under their chin and they learn to stay asleep. If they protest, latch on again and repeat a minute or two later when they slow down again.

Lovely thread for ftm's

My advice would be to do what works until it stops working

This, completely. I fed DS to sleep (after deciding if the authors of all the advice were that fucking upset by it they could come and do the housework while I had a nap) - it worked til about 9 months, then it stopped working. At that point we decided to try sleep training, which took a week. Others find co-sleeping works for them. Others use white noise - you'll find the next thing when you need to.

I fed to sleep until 18 mo. Then DS decided, on his own, to stop. He still has boob, then sits up and points at the cot, hugs his teddy and is asleep within 1min. He's been self settling for naps for much longer.

I want to go back in time and tell everyone who confidently told me that feeding to sleep is a Terrible Sin to fuck off, and that instead scaring new mums is a Terrible Sin.