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 to sleep my third child and did with my first two (who now sleep amazingly). What’s not to love?
Around 12 months I switched to shush pat/holding hands and gradual retreat. Took time but worked eventually.
Seriously, just feed to sleep and don’t worry

I feed my 5month old to sleep, I think its normal and natural. Very occasionally it won't work and I'll rock/bounce him to sleep. He still wakes regularly at night and feeds back to sleep. We co sleep because he stopped sleeping in his moses basket/cot at about 3 months. After nights of trying to get him to stay asleep in his cot, and us both being exhausted we both sleep better now.

I don't know how long we will be feeding to sleep and co sleeping, but it works for us now so I don't worry about it.

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

Are you able to put him down once asleep or are you holding LO for naps too?

I fed my DS to sleep at that age and he just naturally stopped doing it when he got to about 10 months.

He is 13 months now and will settle himself.

I was exactly where you are now and read all sorts that drove me crazy. He hated naps and nothing seemed to work apart from feeding to sleep or the car.

Just do what you need to do and it will all work out.

I read all the stuff about feeding to sleep being wrong and worried too. Then I wondered how something so lovely, natural-feeling and effective could possibly be wrong and carried on. My dc seem to be ok.

Swirling, who would even write that it was wrong - it makes no sense.