Night waking breastfeeding
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We're pretty much the opposite to Lucy. I haven't fed to sleep for naps for a few months (mostly self settles but sometimes car/pram or i need to hold him) but still do before bed. He usually wakes up once in the night for a feed. If he wakes up more (like when he's teething or ill) I tend to just hold him back to sleep, occasionally ill feed him twice. I'm planning on moving away from feeding to sleep but waiting until after he's gone to nursery so it's not too much change.
I was the same but my LO started doing split nights and it was killing me so I got some help from a sleep consultant and did some Ferber sleep training and within 3 nights he’d stopped waking completely and dropped the night feed
@Hannah hey! Did you do the Ferber training during the night too? Or just at the start and that helped him waking up? My LO is having so many false starts and then when awake at night, refusing to go back to sleep in the cot….
@Hannah hi! my LO could already self settle during the day it was just our nights that were an issue so we had a head start but needed to tackle his night time. We agreed a short but v consistent bedtime routine (nappy change, same song every night, and a night night phrase) and did 5-10 minute checks at bedtime and then in the night anytime he woke before 2:30/3am I would do Ferber (5-10 min checks, go in stroke his face/sush for 10 seconds, say night night phrase and leave) if he woke past 3am I fed him - we agreed this as I knew he could easily last until then. I also didn’t give him a full feed for him it was about 5 mins. If he woke again I had the choice to either Ferber again or do a v short feed but this didn’t happen for us. We had one horrible night where he cried/whinged for 1.5 hours on and off and then two nights of one 5 min feed and then Ferber to settle within 20 mins and then night 4 onwards we’ve had no feeds at all and 80% of nights he’s slept through 11/12 hours
I should add that I did also go through the day routine with the sleep consultant to make sure there weren’t any issues, he was eating and feeding enough in the day prior to doing the Ferber
Oh sorry one more thing, about a month before sleep training I switched his bedtime feed to formula, but still BF for his other 2 day feeds and for any night wakes we were having
@Hannah thanks for your replies. She only contact naps during the day… so I need to do a lot of work it seems lol. How come you switched to formula before bed?
@Hannah if contact naps work for you then maybe you don’t need to change them though? He started to do really short feeds pre bedtime by either being too distracted or falling asleep quickly on the boob and I wasn’t sure if my supply was dipping or if he just wasn’t hungry and wanted to make sure he was getting what he needs. I was also ready to have a bit of independence after so long EBF so wanted him to start having one bottle a day and he preferred formula vs expressed in a bottle so formula it was. Interestingly I find now he will take 7-9oz and there was no way he was getting that much milk on the boob
@Hannah amazing thank you so much for your replies. Really interesting!
I feed him back to sleep but he only wakes up once each night. He's currently teething and has a throat infection so it's easier for the both of us. He self settles at bedtime but he's generally fed to sleep for naps as I've not been able to change naps and dont know why. At nursery they can't either but it's very natural to feed to sleep so they give him his expressed bottle before his nap.