How do I break feeding to sleep association?

[mightymatt]

@felipeoliveir Hey! My baby is 11 months old and I want to wean her off by around the 14 month mark. Can you share some insights on your weaning journey and how you put baby to sleep without feeding? It’ll be so helpful! Thank you!

 

[annjro]

@allfree15 Why? 4.5 months is tiny. Baby is doing exactly what babies do at this age

 

[allfree15]

@annjro Thank you

 

[annjro]

@allfree15 You're doing great, it's a hard job. Do take help from others whenever you can!

 

[silvereyes]

@allfree15 Ok since this is science based parenting I’m going to give you an honest, rational answer which is that there is absolutely zero that you can do to “get out of” a sleep regression. If you stopped feeding to sleep, the baby will still wake up the same amount of times, and will require some other kind of soothing to go back to sleep. If you decide to sleep train tomorrow, it won’t help you evade any of the other sleep regressions. And it won’t make this one shorter. Now to get anecdotal, the 4 month sleep regression was the worst we’ve experienced to date, and it lasted like 5 weeks. Godspeed!

 

[allfree15]

@silvereyes Thank you. I’m happy to wait it out but some of what I’ve read implies she’ll never learn to sleep better unless I teach her to self soothe. It would be a relief for this not to be true. I would love to just keep doing what I’m doing until it passes. My fear is that it won’t pass

 

[thabang]

@allfree15 As someone who has tried to find "solutions" to sleep, just try to remind yourself that if it was that simple there wouldnt be such a huge market of sleep products, trainers, books etc etc.

Where I live there is a whole service provided of nurses that will help you with your babies sleep, its amazing but it still doesnt fix them. So many people I know have done it and it works a bit for some, not at all for others.

We worked for a month to get her to fall asleep in her crib, it worked maybe 60% of the time for a week. Then she learned to sit up, stand up and crawl all in the space of 10 days. It all went to shit as the second you put her down awake she would pop up and pull herself to standing. I lost my mind for a while and then just went back to holding her to sleep. Sometimes it helps to try other methods but other times the path of least resistance is best for your sanity.

Edit to add: anecdotally i stopped feeding to sleep mainly by focusing on feeds during the day. I fed her when she woke up and I think this helped to gradually associate feeding with wake ups. I also got her dad to do way more bed times after I knew she had a full belly, becaus he doesnt smell like milk so the association wasnt there.

 

[annjro]

@allfree15 Read lyndsey hookway. Apparently babies can't self soothe. It's our job to help regulate their nervous systems & calm the autonomic nervous system to sleep.

 

[kashanali897]

@allfree15 Do you want to break out of nursing to sleep? I’ve done it for all three of my babies (although my second one quickly ended up preferring to be just rocked) and they all became good sleepers by about a year or so. The 4 month sleep regression was the hardest, but it would have been hard whether I nursed to sleep or not. But overall no one has ended up with any negative sleep associations or habits.

I’m of the opinion that it’s more efficient for me to nurse for ten minutes, get sleeping baby back in the bassinet and go back to sleep than to lie awake for a long while listening to baby make noise being awake and unable to fall back asleep.

 

[allfree15]

@kashanali897 I’m happy to keep nursing if it gets easier. Sometimes it takes a long time to get her down because she wakes when I unlatch and try to put her down. Did you ever have periods where that was an issue?

 

[ceria]

@allfree15 That was why I stopped nursing to sleep. It was taking hours to put him to bed because he kept waking up when I unlatched him. I ended up offering him a bottle instead (very much not his preference) to make sure he wasn't hungry and then rocked him as he cried until he fell asleep. It took 45-60ish minutes the first couple nights, which was shorter but more crying than nursing to sleep. He got used to it pretty quickly though. (Light at the end of the tunnel for long bedtimes: at 18 months my son now points to his crib when he's done with stories and goes to sleep totally independently.)

 

[kamison99]

@allfree15 What worked for me, (but maybe not for everyone) is that we had a twin size bed on the floor with no blankets or anything. The baby slept there. I would lie next to him to nurse and when he fell asleep I just rolled off the bed and got back into mind. The transfer from nursing in a chair to the crib was too hard and took forever. We did the floor bed for a few months. Maybe between 2-7 months old. Once they can crawl, etc. it stops being a great idea. For for a few months is was a perfect solution. (I didn’t want to bed share because I like my pillows and blankets and space. So this was a good middle ground.)

 

[joseph2013]

@kamison99 What did you do after 7mos?

 

[kamison99]

@joseph2013 Back to the crib. I can’t really remember what age. But once he was crawling.

 

[allanprds]

@allfree15 Have you tried a consistent bedtime routine? We also mostly feed to sleep but do so as part of the exact same routine every night (bath, song, sleep sack),which seems to cue him that it's bed time. He often cries a little when I put him down but will fall back asleep within a few minutes most days after shushing or rocking.

 

[allfree15]

@allanprds I do massage (not every time), nappy change, book, sleep sack, feed with white noise and patting. Not sure if this is enough?

 

[allanprds]

@allfree15 That should be enough to create an association. If baby had a good nursing session within the past half hour, I would personally not nurse again right away and would rock or shush instead.

 

[allfree15]

@allanprds Thank you x

 

[mazpunk]

@allfree15 Anecdotally I nursed mine to sleep until just after her first birthday and then she just didn’t want it anymore. She would shake her head no when I offered so I just stopped. We switched to my husband rocking her for a minutes. Worked like a charm. In fact it pretty much coincided with her starting to consistently sleep through the night. She’s almost 2 now and sleeps 12 hours at night, no issues

 

[allfree15]

@mazpunk Thank you