advised to stop breastfeeding

Ignore your HV she is horribly uneducated on breastfeeding. Stopping breastfeeding won’t necessarily help sleep at all the likelihood is baby will still wake just be much harder to get back down. Night weaning isn’t recommended before 18 months x

Honestly, HV’s are more harm than good sometimes. As Yasmin has said, your child being breastfed has nothing to do with the amount they sleep. Night wakings are normal until at least 2yrs old. If offering the breast is the best way to get your baby back to sleep in the middle of the night then carry on xx

Echo everything already said. temperament is the biggest factor when it comes to sleep and if you stop breastfeeding, that’s not likely to change it. My sister in law stopped breastfeeding her second sooner than she wanted as he wasn’t sleeping and it did nothing to change his sleep and she regrets it enormously. He’s just turned 15 months and his sleep is starting to improve now as he gets older x

@Yasmin she said to me that a baby of her age should not be waking up for a feed & given she is on 3 meals a day should not be waking up hungry. My daughter associates sleep with BF so doesn’t self soothe which is really hard work sometimes and i’m not sure what else to try because she is waking multiple times a night (I don’t feed her overnight until about 5am) she wakes up crying and I think she’s hungry but HV said she’s likely not and it’s just habit x

This is poor advice. A baby’s main source of nutrition is breastmilk or formula until one year so as your baby is still under one you shouldn’t be weaning at all unless you were replacing with formula. Nursing to sleep is a biologically normal behaviour and it is still normal and ok for babies of this age and also toddlers to wake at night and nurse to sleep. Though I know it can be tiring. My son is over 2.5 years old and still nurses to sleep. Night weaning is not always going to result in better sleep especially at this age when she likely just isn’t developmentally ready to sleep longer. And you can then lose the easiest way to get them back to sleep. Obviously it is your choice but definitely not recommended before 12 months and many consider it more gentle to night wean after 18 months when they have better understanding. If you are stopping breastfeeding it is advised to stop gradually one feed at time to reduce risk of mastitis.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DBuGRCeRTjV/?igsh=eWp5eHllZjhzajU4 This post may help reassure you x

@Jess I actually questioned that she would still require milk & she said “oh yes that’s true” didn’t fill me with much confidence to be honest. My baby does not take a bottle so suggested I try formula in a sippy cup! My LG doesn’t self soothe and does require feeding to sleep which she just said it isn’t going to help her if she associates breastfeeding & sleep. Is there anything I can try to help her to learn to self soothe? She wakes up 3-4 times a night but if she is in my bed she tends to only wake 1-2 x

My gp advised me to stop breastfeeding for this exact reason...such a shame that mothers are being advised to stop the most natural thing ever. The benefits to mother and baby are phenomenal and I feel like we are being let down by our health care providers who are telling us to stop early. The WHO recommend 2 years and beyond. If you are concerned about baby associating sleep with the boob then check out Sleep Sense on Google...you just need to establish a routine for little one where boob isn't the end game before sleeping. I know it is easy coming from an outsider. I've fallen victim to being the pacifier for the last few years 😅. But now with my third I'm determined to get rid of that association and I feed her and put her down drowsy (she's only 9 weeks so it's easy at the moment).

I stopped breastfeeding my son at 11 months just because my milk dried up due to being pregnant again. His sleep improved massively within a week. He definitely had a feed to sleep association that broke once breastfeeding was no longer an option. By all means continue until she is 12 months old and then see how you feel. You could reduce feeds slowly if you’re worried about engorgement. Every baby will respond to this differently. My baby wasn’t too bothered and just increased his intake of solid food naturally. I didn’t get engorged but that’s because my supply was dwindling anyway. If you reduce feeds slowly I think your body just adapts and you shouldn’t get much engorgement.

@Shannon so you increased his solids intake? Did you replace the breast milk at all for formula until he turned 12 months? My baby feeds to sleep so that’s a habit I need to try and break but not sure how…. i’ve tried a few sleep training methods but nothing seems to work she just cries. We’re also going through a separation anxiety phase too which doesn’t make things any easier - i’m exhausted with barely no sleep and just want to find a way where she can sleep better and me too whether that’s continuing BF or not 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ignore your HV. My daughter breastfed to sleep for close to 3 years. I night weaned her at 18 months. Fully weaning her took less than a week and I finished doing so last month. The AAP and WHO recommend breastfeeding to two years and beyond. No HV should be discouraging a mom from breastfeeding when both she and baby are doing well with it.

Look I eat more meals a day and can wake you up hungry in the middle of the night. That is not a fact. She could also be waking up for comfort, not hunger. Many babies associate sleep with BF. It is their safe space and children are not meant to self soothe. That is also a major lie. Not even a 5 year old can self soothe. Children need us to go regulate. I’d find someone else. 22 months and still using the power of my boobs to get him back down. I

I offered more solids and he ate them. He rejected formula so I spoke to my doctor explaining the situation and she said that since he was nearly 1 anyway it’s okay to give him cows milk and plenty of other dairy products instead. Try only offering a boob every other night wake. Or just trying to cut out one night feed at a time. You have to do it gradually so they have a chance to make up the calories during another feed. Comfort her as much as possible without boob at those wakes when you have decided to get her to sleep another way.

My baby is 14 months and still feeds to sleep. I used to be really worried that he can’t self soothe and it used to make me feel like I’m doing something wrong. Eventually I realised that he’s only little and it’s normal for him to feed for comfort and feel safe when he’s close to me. Once I let go of the pressure to have him be able to self soothe I felt much better! I actually enjoy feeding to sleep now, it’s so much easier settling him at night. We ended up co sleeping because when he was in his cot he’d wake every couple of hours and it was exhausting. Now we all sleep so much better. Most nights he sleeps through, sometimes he’ll stir in the night but will settle immediately once he starts feeding. I definitely prefer this to having to get out of bed multiple times per night to settle him. You mentioned that your baby sleeps better when she’s in your bed, is co sleeping something that you could try to help with the night wakings?

HV’s are NOT lactation consultants and are not fully educated on the subject of BF, same as a Dr. I fed to sleep until he was 3- he’d sleep in 5mins flat, it was the quickest easiest way he would fall asleep, but he slept through. It worked for us and I kept doing it until he self weaned. Now? He takes like 20-30mins to go to sleep. Gone are the days he’ll sleep in 5-10mins flat.