How to wean 9month old off breastfeeding to sleep?

Hi All,

This question is for a friend of mine who is returning to work in a months time.

Her nine month old boy is fully breastfeed and my friend has using bfing to put him to sleep. I believe they co-sleep alot too.

My friend has to return to work next month and her job is night shift. Problem being her boy will only go to sleep with the help from mums boob. She tells me that he is not feeding for food but for comfort only.

In the last month she has tried to put him to bed in his cot but he gets really worked up and the whole situation is just too much for both of them. The only thing that works is if she lays with him on her bed and he will go to sleep.

As you could imagine my friend is very anxious about returning to work.

BTW bub refuses a bottle (he will take her milk from a sippy cup though) and he hates dummie

My suggestion has been to feed him outside of the bed and then take him to bed but not give him boob for comfort. Then eventually get her hubby to lie down in bed with him and get him to go off to sleep. Her DH will be doing the night routine 5 nights per week so I think he needs to be involved.

Anyone else got any ideas?

i wish i had advice to offer! i fed my dd to sleep till she was 2.5 years old! (about 18 months longer than i would have liked!)

I also used to feed DD to sleep but had problems when she wouldn't sleep for anyone else.

This worked for me changing things a bit each day: feed to sleep, then feed to sleep but wake slightly before putting to bed, then wake almost fully and rock back to sleep. Then just rock to sleep, gradually putting to bed more awake each time. It' took me a couple of weeks but worked well and no tears. I also introduced a dummy as a replacement so she could still suck to sleep. Hope that helps. :D

Thank you. I think this sounds like the approach my friend would be looking for.

Today i saw the pinky mkay "sleeping like a baby" book which had suggestions of how to do this. I did not have time to read it im sorry but it seemed to suggest things along the lines of incorporating other cues such as "sleepy words", music/songs etc and then slowly removing the feed to sleep cue. I think the sleepy words may be words or phrases such as "its time for sleep". Not sure if there are others who have this book who may be better able to explain (i want to get this book it looks good!) but i hope this may help a little.