Talk to me, please, if you feed your baby to sleep (or nearly to sleep)

[AngelDog]

DS is 12 weeks and terrible at going to sleep. I can't get him to sleep at all during the day except in a sling, but at bedtime and in the middle of the night he seems to be happy to feed to sleep (or almost to sleep). At bedtime he will usually fall off straight into a deep sleep, when I can generally put him straight into his cot. In the middle of the night, he will be very sleepy when he finished, but it can then take up to an hour and a half for me to persuade him to actually drop off. He is tired and drowsy, and not wanting to play/have awake time, but he seems to really struggle to make the transition from drowsiness to sleep.

Sometimes he will finish feeding and then be thrashing around, and I'm not sure how to calm him. Sometimes he will be too excited by the things he can see around him (even though I only have a dim night light on). For some reason this is never a problem at bedtime.

So, some questions for you:

1. Do you feed DC completely to sleep or nearly asleep?

1. If the latter, how do you get DC to go from sleepy / drowsy to actually asleep?

1. Where do you feed DC - in your arms & then put them down, or in your bed (co-sleepers) or some other way?

1. How do you burp DC without waking them up? DS always needs burping, or he will either fail to settle, or wake again a bit later needing to burp. However, burping him often wakes him up again after the feed.

1. What do you do if DC wakes up too much to settle, but doesn't want to feed any more?

Thanks!

Oos, I meant to add:

1. Does feeding to sleep work even with a bottle? (DS is exclusively breast fed but I can see the possibility of DH needing to do bedtime with a bottle of expressed milk at some point.)

Hello
thinking back to when DD was 12w
1.tried to feed her to sleep, was desperate for her to sleep

1. if not fully asleep i would hold rock and lullaby, think she was 15w when DH in desperation stuck her in moses tired but awake and basically we let her grizzle tiredly till she fell asleep could take 40mins, if she cried we went and picked, held and rocked, but we accepted a tired grizzling down as going to sleep noise
2. was feeding in arms then

4.didnt burp her by then

1. cry scream tear hair out. doh! partly joking. we have had a merry dance over the last months with the restless tired baby overnight, she 9m now, was thrashing next to me, into cot, may cry, back to me. i guess i tried rocking, holding tight, feed, refeed, feed again, in cot ignored 5 mins, put mobile on overnight and sometimes we both feel asleep, lately seems to accept hand pressing down on back for a few mins
2. she wouldnt take a bottle

1. Fed completely to sleep. At that age I couldn't keep him awake on the breast!
2. Cuddles on my shoulder while singing to drown out the very loud crying.
3. Never looked back after figuring out how to feed lying down. He refused bottles and I worked full-time, so most of his nursing was overnight. Zzzzzzzzzzzz
4. BF babies don't need to burp as much. I did "baby sit-ups" to wake him up mid-way through feeds and they helped get the wind up, plus patting on my shoulder for 5 min. You can do leg crunches too, but that's more for getting the wind DOWN IYSWIM.
5. Cuddle.
6. Not advised. The milk can pool in their mouth. Unlike bottles, boobs don't drop when nobody's sucking. (Other than at let-down, of course.) Not worth worrying about for bedtimes sake. Your DH, not having boobs, needs to use a different routine for bedtime to you anyway. Your baby won't be fooled that a bottle = a boob. It has a completely different texture, shape, and sucking mechanism to get the milk out.

A belated thank you both for the replies.

tiredpooky, your no. 5 sounds very much like me at the moment!

Feeling sleepy after being up 4 times last night and taking an hour to get him back into the cot after one session. I would just pop him in bed with me but the night before last he just refused to feed properly until I got up & sat in the chair!