I hate having to let my toddler scream herself to sleep.

[hippygirllucky]

My 18mo has been fed to sleep up til now. I'm not sick of it but I know she needs to fall asleep on her own at some point. This evening she fed for an hour and still wasn't asleep so I just told her I loved her and put her in her cot and left. She screamed herself to sleep.

She either seems to go to sleep on the boob, or refuses and ends up just having to scream herself to sleep because anything else will be interpreted as play time :( we've tried putting her in the cot and stroking her, gently reassuring her and sitting with her but she just pops up and interprets this as play time. We've even sat in the room quietly and not engaged but just been a reassuring presence and she's just screamed and screamed because we won't play. The longest my husband did this was 1.5 hours, after which we gave up and I fed her to sleep. In the end, it ends up being easier to just leave the room and within about 10 minutes she'll scream herself to sleep but it's heart breaking.

Please help. This is awful.

Sorry but this is a load of rubbish. Do what you need to do. Have you tried the Ferber method?

I'm feeding my toddler to sleep right now and will soon feed my baby to sleep. Why do this now?! Toddler won't always feed to sleep. They'll stop by choice if you let them.

Our baby is 8 months old and we are starting to have dad put her to bed after I've given her a rusk with expressed milk mixed in, followed by breast till she is full.

Last night, I fed her downstairs and then just laid on the bed with her and she curled up next to me to fall asleep. That worked! So now dad is singing her in bed tonight.

She still wakes every 2-3 hours for milk though but I'm hoping to get a bit of evening to myself while my husband takes over.

Maybe give that a go!

For those feeding to sleep - are your partners able to do bedtime without the screaming?

I feed my 11month old to sleep and if DH needs to do bedtime she screams and cries for hours before falling asleep it’s so heartbreaking (he’s rocking and singing to her the whole time - she’s never alone) but I still really worry about the impact of that stress on her!

Maybe she's teething

See if calpol will help her sleep

I let my DD cry for 5–10 minutes before she fell asleep OP. She learned to go to sleep on her own and would do so very happily after only 2 or 3 evenings of leaving her to cry. Then we'd have a phase of a few months where she would happily babble herself to sleep or look at books. Then sometimes we'd need to go through letting her get upset again. She always knew I was around as I deliberately clattered around the house so that she knew I hadn't left her all alone but I didn't want her to be dependant on my presence to drift off.

Yes, it's unpopular to leave them to cry but I know 3 and 4 year olds who are still terrible terrible sleepers and who don't get enough hours of sleep in by the time the parents have played a merry dance with them all evening to get them to sleep gently. Parents are frazzled; kids are over-tired which perpetuates the problem.

Learning to settle to sleep is important and I wouldn't want to leave it until they're pre-school age to set some habits in train.

If you need to stop feeding her to sleep for your own mental health- then we can come up with strategies to help. Otherwise, just feed her to sleep. Both of mine decided when they wanted to stop and did. Overnight.

Don't do it then. No one's making you let your child scream herself to sleep 😢

Similar situation but a lot younger. 9 months old but I go back to work in a couple of months. He relies on me so much to be able to go to sleep and it’s a concern cos will be going to nursery and sometimes due to work I won’t be there for bedtime. Last night it took over an hour of us going in and out comforting him every few minutes very stressful hate hearing him cry but he slept all the way through til 6 which never happens he always ends up in my bed by 1am and then on and off the boob all night so I was amazed. tonight husband said he would just do it as had a rough day with his naps where he would not go down for me and I went out and he settled within 15 minutes couldnt believe it so would appear I am the “issue”
as in he is too attached to me so the fact hubby did bedtime I think helped. Fingers crossed for another good night. Hoping once he gets used to going to sleep on is own it soon won’t matter if it’s me or hubby doing it x

Put her on you and sing, very comforting. Can be good interim, but still takes ages.
Or pillow on the floor and handhold+ ignore screaming, some comfort but accepting the change.

If you're ok with feeding her to sleep and it means bedtime is quick and you get evenings to yourself, why change it? You don't have to force anything, she'll drop off by herself eventually.