8 month old fed to sleep - how to stop?!

[Laueme]

Hi ladies,

First time posting on mumsnet 🙋sorry in advance for the long post.

I am after some advice please on how to get my 8 month old DD to sleep! Since the dreaded 4 month sleep regression she has never got back to sleeping properly, and will wake between 3 and 4 times at night each time requiring me to feed her to sleep.

Her day-time naps are a mixed bag sometimes she will do an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon and other times she catnaps.

I have always fed her to sleep, it was easier in the beginning because I was breastfeeding and she was in the next to me crib, but now she is in her own room and I would like to stop breastfeeding as I am going back to work in 3 weeks.

I have tried to get her to nap in the day without a feed and she gets herself so worked up. If I go in and pat her on the back/ shhh her it just gets her more worked up. If I pick her up she will push away from me to start with, may calm down but the second I put her down she is screaming again 0-100 instantly. Nothing works until I get my boob out and then within seconds her eyes are shut and she is off.

Yesterday I resisted feeding her for her lunchtime nap (she had had her lunch just before) and she refused to sleep for an hour and a half!! And at this point she needed her next feed 🤦.

Suggestions please on what I should do?

I’m in a similar situation to you - at night anyway. DD is nearly 8 months and I always feed her to sleep at night - sometimes that’s just once at 4am, sometimes 3x I’m just too tired at night to faff about with the shush/pat for ages when I know the BF will get her back to sleep.

I am really sick of BFing though, as she is a resolute bottle refuser.

I’ve had some success with applying a strict daytime nap routine:

• 1 x 30 min nap between 9-10
• 1 long nap between 12.30-3 -ideally at least 2 hours (still a bit hit & miss but improving)

I don’t feed her to sleep for these. I feed her at 7ish (earlier if she wakes earlier), then solids breakfast about 7.30.

Then solids lunch about 11 and BF about 11.30 (have just swapped to solids first - if I BF first she won’t really eat the solids).

Then trying to replace mid afternoon BF with formula in a sippy cup, solids dinner at 4.30/5, bath, BF and bedtime 6-6.30.

Not much help with the nighttime sorry but it’s probably a bit easier to wake the feed to sleep association in the daytime when you have more energy & go from there?

Last time with DS I nightweaned him by making DH do all night settling for 3 nights at 7.5 months - so I know it works. I’m just too tired to bother.