12 month old sleep - help

[josierose01]

My DD was 1 on 15th January 2021. She has never been a particularly great sleeper with usually 3 wake ups a night being a good night. She is breastfed and I will feed back to sleep during the night. We will also sometimes co-sleep if the wake ups are particular regular some nights. I'd like to stop breastfeeding but do not know how to with her relying on it so much for sleep.

We have tried various sleep training methods but none with much success. If she is left in her cot she will just get very hysterical even if I go in to check on her and reassure her. Most sleep training methods say 'go in and lay baby back down' but she just stands straight up and continues to cry and scream. In room settling doesn't seem to be an option as I think it stimulates her too much.

It has got to the point where something has to give - I feel I cannot continue as I am. I don't necessarily need her to sleep through the night or expect that, but to be able to put her down for bedtime and not have it take hours to get her to sleep just for her to wake up 45 minutes later screaming for a feed she doesn't need would be great!

DH is very supportive but DD will not entertain the idea of him putting her to nap/bed at all and will scream and scream until I come in to settle/cuddle/feed. We do the usual same routine each night. Bath, boob, stories, cuddle. Very dark room, white noise on. Her cot is never used as a punishment her room is always a nice place to be.

Please help a very tired and desperate Mum out!! Does anyone have any tips or advice on what we could try?

I'd like to stop breastfeeding but do not know how to with her relying on it so much for sleep.

The gentle method would be to cuddle/rock/cosleep to get her to sleep instead of feeding.

The brutal way is to teach her to sleep in the cot. *

Both will involve upset and crying, so when you say you've not had much success in methods you have used, what do you mean? If you are judging success/failure on if she gets upset then in afraid it's your expectations that need to change. Sleep training is likely to involve some distress so don't take this as a measure of a technique not working.

• teaching her to sleep in the cot needs very basic levels of learning, things she currently has no concept of. For example

• to sleep she needs to lie (herself) down
• to sleep she needs to calm and still her body
• to sleep she needs to stay lying down and not fidget
• to sleep she doesn't need to suck

And so on... there is a lot of learning to do and while she doesn't know/understand how to go to sleep on her own she will cry with frustration and she will need your help to teach her. Just putting her into the cot and hoping for the best isn't likely to help.

I breastfed to 21 months but if I remember correctly the only way I managed to stop feeding to sleep at that age was for DH to do bedtime. He read DS a story, then gave him a bottle, which pretty much knocked him out, and then put him down. He didn't like it for a few nights, granted, but it did work and we had a blissful few months of drop in cot, leave room, 12 hours sleep.