Cosleeping & breastfeeding

[wallacea90]

Ok so this might be a long one but I'm desperate for help.
I have a 16month old son who breastfeeds to sleep. I can feed him to sleep then transfer him to sleep in his cot, he can sleep for about an hour then he's awake & standing up screaming, he can find his dummy & comforter himself so that doesn't settle him. He will cry & cry til I take him into bed with me, if I try to transfer him again he wakes up instantly & screams. So it ends up him sleeping in with me. Now it's the only way we all get sleep as my partner sleeps in another room, although now I feel that I don't have much of a relationship with my partner & only housemates. It's seriously affecting my mental health. I don't know what else to do to try & get him to sleep on his own. He won't take a bottle either. I've tried sleep sprays, white noise etc. Anyone have any help!!

Oh I feel for you, I really do!
I BF my son to sleep until he was 17 months old.... at that point I saw that it just wasn't effective anymore and he was waking up more and couldn't self sooth - it sounds like you're in a really similar situation! For me I had to stop the feeding completely during the night. For 1 week my mum came round and put him to bed every night. I had to detach myself from it so he would stop asking for the feed - he didn't expect it from my mum. During the night I just had to let him cry (I stayed in the room with him) and refuse feeding him.... it was horrible. I felt so mean and tired and scared, but I knew it was for his own good! Learning to sleep is so important for them! After a week I started putting him to bed and I did a little bit of controlled crying where I would leave him to cry for a couple of mins, go in, settle and then leave the room. The first 2 nights it took it took him over an hour to go to sleep each time and then after that he started to sleep through - hed never ever slept through prior to this!

Trust me I was a mum who would say "I'd never control cry" and spent 17 months happily getting up 6/7 times every night to feed him to sleep. But I saw that he'd outgrown all of that for me and that's why I had to change.

Your son will learn to settle but you HAVE to pick a new method and stick to it. It won't be easy for a short period of time but trust me, it will get easier. Every tough night is a night closer to it being better. If you have anyone to help you in those initial nights to help break to feeding expectancy then please use them as that really helped me!

Good luck, you can do this :)... and the sooner you do, the sooner it'll get better!