What do you do if you don't feed to sleep?

[vgiraffe]

So DD (13 mo) can go to sleep by herself and most nights does this. She is also often sleeping through now. Some nights and naps, she doesn't go to sleep easily and I then resort to breastfeeding her to sleep. I am considering stopping breastfeeding but how will I get her to go to sleep if she won't self settle? Don't want to leave her to cry and nothing else seems to work...

When mine were little I fed them until they were drowsy and put them down awake. Older one sometimes grizzled for a bit but not all out crying.

From day 1 I sometimes put DD in her bed awake (when she was well fed and drowsy) so she got used to self settling. She would grumble a bit. Now at 10 months I will put her in her cot at sleep time. It's roughly an 80/20 split between her going to sleep easily or getting cross about it (crying for a few minutes).

Feed, put down and then stay and comfort. Took a couple of nights for my ds1 to get it. You don't need to leave the room. Also, explain what's changing, babies understand more than we realise.

Thanks. Rebel I think you're right about them understanding more than we think so maybe I just need to tell her this is how it is now! Sometimes I leave her even if she's whinging but tonight she just kept whinging and crying for ages and so then I feel bad that for whatever reason she can't settle and needs some help but I know sometimes she might just need a bit longer. I think actually she's better left on her own than when I'm in the room as then she just gets cross that I'm there but not feeding her! She is much better with DH but that's not always an option.

for those of you that are successful with not feeding to sleep do you find your little ones just winge a bit when they cry or is it full on upset crying. I would like to be able to move towards bot feeding to sleep (I do it every single sleep) but ds 6 months old escalates his crying very quickly and I don't want to end up doing cio so I very quickly resort to feeding him again

Mostly whingy but I did generally have to let DD cry a little bit in the early days because I'm on my own and if I was in the middle of a job I would let her cry for a couple of minutes while I finished it. As she got older (4 months maybe) I would put her to bed and literally time 3 minutes on the clock and go back if she was still crying after that.

I tend to think of crying as having levels:

1 = grumbling/whinging
2 = a bit upset
3 = distressed

I would never willingly leave her level 3 crying at all and only for a few minutes level 2 crying.

It worked well for us and I was surprised to find that from early on DD might level 2 cry for a minute and then it would reduce to a grumble and then next minute she'd be asleep!

that's really helpful @INeedNewShoes
when she reaches level 3 what did you do then? pick up? or just sit there?

If level 3 I would assume there was something actually wrong and go in and pick up her and give her a pat (and when she was under 6 months maybe cycle her legs) to wind her and comfort her until she calmed down, then tell her it's 'sleep time now' and put her back in the cot and walk straight out. In the early days I would only repeat this maybe 3 times before accepting that she didn't want to go to sleep.

Basically if baby is just getting wound up they're unlikely to settle so it's about judging the tipping point between them having a bit of a shout and them actually being upset and needing you.

I realised at about 4 months that my presence agitated DD when trying to go to sleep. She seemed to sometimes need to grumble for a couple of minutes on her way to sleep and was best left to do that. Once she was asleep she looked really relaxed (relaxed face, open hands etc.) so I do think the grumbling didn't indicate that she was actually upset.

I think it helps DD to be able to hear that I am around as she drops off as generally I'd put her down then go and have a shower or do some clearing up so she would know I was there and the sounds gave her something to think about.