Breastfeeding to sleep

[Jellybaby13]

Hi,

My daughter is now 11 months today and she's exclusively breastfed. My aim is to try and breastfeed her until she's 18 months.

She only ever falls asleep to the following conditions:

1. being breastfed
2. in the high chair
3. in the pram
4. in the car seat

She's not really great with napping, half an hour naps at most if she naps at all but she won't go to sleep herself, it has to be with one of the 4 things above.

Honestly I've had trouble with her sleep from the beginning and I can count on one hand how many times she's slept through the night but it's really starting to get to me now. I go back to work next month and if I'm starting to not cope while I'm off work then god knows what I'll be like when I have to go back. I know all this is karma though cause I'm also a terrible sleeper and have been since I was a baby!!

I also want to try and get my periods back so I can try for another (god only knows why when I'm this exhausted 🤣) but with her waking in the night and not going back down without a feed AND having to feed to nap, I just don't see this happening.

She'll wake in the middle of the night and she'll be WIDE AWAKE for around 2 hours and won't go back to sleep no matter how many times I put her down.

I don't want to stop breastfeeding but I do want to try and come up with a solution to help her sleep better and maybe get her to self soothe herself to sleep. She hasn't really had a dummy at all cause I don't really like them but she had one for a while at around 6 months just to help her sleep in the day but she's gone off them now, just spits them out.

It's also worth noting that because my husband is a long distance lorry driver I'm basically a single mum cause he's away all week. He also can't do much on the weekend cause he was recently in a collision with another lorry which has resulted in internal pain in his wrists and elbows which means he can't stand holding our daughter for longer than 5 minutes before it gets too much for him.

Can anyone suggest anything for me to try? Has anyone had similar experiences with success at the end?

Thank you in advance!

I was in a similar place a couple of months ago OP. It is SO hard. We had ended up accidentally co sleeping because the baby just would not do to sleep in any for or crib. My husband also works away. In the end he took a couple of days off after a bank holiday so we could work on it together. Could your husband take any time off to help or is he booked up?

Our pediatrician recommended that I sleep in a separate room and my husband deal with the night wakings, so there was no temptation for me to breastfeed and it was less confusing for the baby. We were prepared for it to take a few nights (hence the time off). It took one night! That night was absolutely brutal - my husband was up every couple of hours and it took him about 20-30 minutes to get the baby to sleep each time. He didn't pick the baby up, just stroked him in the crib and shushed him - so this might work for your husband. I could hear the baby crying and was heartbroken. But the second night, he woke once for a couple of minutes and then that was it! He sleeps 7pm to 5.30am now. I started by doing a dream feed at 10pm, but I just stopped that and the sleep is fine.

We had other issues - the 5.30am wake up isn't ideal, his naps aren't great and actually getting him to sleep can be a nightmare. But having that security of knowing I'll be able to sleep all night has been a game changer for me. I know you and your DC can figure it out!

One more thing - our baby has been so much happier since he's been sleeping through the night. I still breastfeed when he wakes up, as part of the bedtime routine and sometime once during the day. I am rooting for you because I know it's such a difficult issue. You can do it!