Feeding to sleep my nearly 1 year old!

[user1490521163]

Hello

My baby boy is turning 1 this week. I am still exclusively breast feeding and he refuses a bottle. I have always been happy doing this and he still wake up a lot at night but I usually bring him into our bed and feed him back to sleep. I also feed him to sleep to get him to sleep in the first place. His nap times are usually different and he naps either on a walk in his pram or in the car. But still feeds a bit in the day. We have had a hectic month this month, with a little holiday followed by a week in hospital with him (he is all fine now) so I know he will take a while to settle back into his routine (not that he had much on one in the first place!) but at the moment he is fighting sleep so much, won’t just settle on me feeding after bath time and is all over the place. He still wants to feed from me but occasionally bites me and gets cross when I try to feed him. I am returning to work next week part time so I am happy to cut down or stop breast feeding but my question is, if I do that how do i teach him to fall asleep on his own in his cot? He just has never done this! When I do put him in his cot awake he just straight away stands up and makes a fuss or thinks it’s funny, he shows no signs of sleepiness at all. I’m not willing to let him cry but how do I teach him gently to settle himself? I feel like he’s too old and I should have done more when he was smaller! Just thought I would see if anyone had any advice? Or will he just naturally do it when he is ready?

I fed mine to sleep at 1. When my youngest gave up at 2, he was meh about it, a nanosecond suck, then bed.

I could have written this myself. DS2 is 13mo and still feeds to sleep unless he's in his push chair or car seat while we're out. I didn't bf DS1 so no previous experience. If I'm not there at nap time, he's fine and will sleep for someone else, but at night he will scream for me constantly. We've tried everything we can think of. We tried CIO in desperation last month. After a solid 40 mins of him crying and angry screaming for me (DP was with him so not alone) we gave in.

I'm sorry I have no advice, I can only empathise

He will definitely do it when he’s ready and if you’ve got a quick and easy way to get him to sleep/back to sleep then I would carry on. Especially when you go back to work as they can become more clingy/unsettled and if you can get him settled back to sleep quickly and easily in the night then at least you’ll have more sleep if you’ve got to get up for work!

I personally wouldn’t change anything - if you want to get him to sleep without you I’d suggest a floor bed in his (babyproofed) room and you can feed him to sleep lying down and sneak off ☺️

OP I could have written this! My DS is also one this week and exactly the same. Fed to sleep at night and for all naps, never taken a bottle. I'm at the end of my tether because he wakes about 5 times a night and I can't do it anymore, I'm exhausted. But I don't know what he answer is. My next step is stopping breastfeeding to be honest.

Same experience... no solution found yet. It is hard. Is breastfeeding causing the child to wake up at night? Do bottle fed babies sleep better? First child was bottle fed and slept nights after 4 months. This child is different and just doesn’t want to drink milk in a bottle or very tiny quantities. Sorry no answer, on the same boat.

I fed dd to sleep till about 18 months. She still occasionally does now, but only if overtired or poorly. I did gentle sleep training with her to get her to settle in the cot and it worked wonders. Just plop her in now and down.

Mine is 16 months and I still feed her to sleep at night, and for her nap if I’m at home with her. I just wanted to say that feeding to sleep is normal and natural and if you’re happy to continue then do so in the knowledge that a lot of us still do it. Self settling is a developmental thing and babies do it at all different ages.

I stopped breastfeeding DD at 21 months as she still fed to sleep and was up every hour in the night and I couldn't cope with the sleep deprivation any longer, my MH was on a steep decline. I went away for two days and took sudafed to dry up my milk and DP took over fully for bedtimes and wake ups for a week or so, I had been working occasional nights so DD had occasionally gone to sleep for him but it took hours and hours of cuddling. But she started sleeping through the night and we thought we'd cracked it, only lasted a month and now she is over 2 she is still up a few times every night. I wish I hadn't stopped bf now and had just been stricter with not feeding to sleep for night wakings, but I was too much of a wuss to deal with the crying, hence going away for weaning. I didn't know anyone else who had bf for longer than a year so didn't have anyone to give advice on how to deal with bf a toddler and now I do know people doing it successfully and regret stopping.