feeding to sleep?

I've fed both my girls to sleep till they worked out their own thing.

I'll be doing it again too with this baby, I see no harm in it and it works!

Cheers,

Beck

LOL I have wished DS would feed to sleep! He only feeds to sleep in the nightime, but otherwise, he still relies on me to put him off to sleep. I adore the time with him TBH. Sometimes I let it worry me and then snap out of it and realise that this is the most natural thing in the world - it's only our stupid Western society that promotes distance and management bah blah.

Enjoy the beautiful contact with the little gems while we can, I say!

i think you'll just find he'll adapt. he may not 'self settle', but i don't see any reason why he couldn't be rocked to sleep in your mum's arms.
i leave my ds with my dad sometimes for a couple of hours and he finds he will either fall asleep out on a walk in the pram, in the sling or sometimes even in the car seat.

I feed my DS to sleep every night and nap time.A lot of people say I shouldn't but you know what, it's so much easier for me and him that I don't see why I should stop!I now find that I can't get to sleep unless I have breastfed him, I think it's the happy hormones that get released when you BF.

wow, thanks for this thread. I went to see the ECHC nurse for 6 month check and of course you know what she said. :rolleyes: (she also picked at her cradle cap. . . what the??)
This thread makes me feel so much better about feeding DD to sleep! :D

LOL I was still doing this until DS was about 18 months! DH could rock DS to sleep in the rocking chair but if it was Mummy putting him to bed DS would want the breast.

We also took the "whatever works" approach.

A couple of factors came into play to stop it in the end...we cut out DS' nap at 18 months because he wasn't going to bed till after 10pm. I got pregnant with Number Two and my breasts became far more sensitive and breastfeeding was not nearly so enjoyable anymore. So because DS was much more tired in the early evening it was easy to settle him off to sleep without the breastfeed.

He was still waking up at night though...so we put him in a big boy's bed with a pillow just to see what happened and he finally started sleeping through. And that was it for the breastfeeding. Now when he wakes up we just bring him into bed with us with his pillow and he snuggles down between us. He would still want a breastfeed at first when he knew I was there but I would just gently say "no" and he would sook for a little bit but would go back to sleep with a cuddle.

DD is approaching 12 months and still feeds to sleep for all naps and night time. In fact, it's pretty much the only way I can get her to nap during the day most of the time.

We have nights where she feeds, has a bit of a cuddle and a fluff about and then drifts off to sleep on her own. But I'm happy for either way.

I'm so glad to know that I'm not the only one who feed bub to sleep!

When I started working, DD was a week shy of turning 3 months, and the only way I could get her to sleep was to feed her to sleep in our bed. I got more sleep, I didn't have to interrupt DD's sleep or spend anywhere up to an hour trying to get her to sleep again if transfer her to her own cot. So I guess you could say we co-sleep and feed to sleep due to necessity (ie, more sleep for both of us!). oh, the cuddles are a bonus!

I used to feel guilty about this, as friends would say that bub will get used to feeding to sleep because I was "creating bad habits". But it worked for us, and it feels nice to be so close to DD, so I kept doing it. I now know that it is the most natural way for babies to feed to sleep, and previous generations have done it for thousands of years. It's Western society which has created this distance between mums and bubs, for the convenience of the parents, based on the belief that babies should be taught to put themselves to sleep. I feel strongly that that belief is a load of cr@p, and I no longer feel defensive about my choice to co-sleep or feed to sleep, because to me it feels like the most beautiful and natural thing to cuddle DD while she feeds.