Does your baby fall asleep with the bottle and wakes for a bottle throughout the night? First of all, I want to let you know that you are not alone. This is one of the most common issues I see when I work with parents to teach their baby how to establish healthy sleep habits. So how do you break the bottle feeding to sleep habit?

Well up to this point, this is the only strategy that has worked to get your baby to sleep. If your baby isn’t bottle feeding to sleep, then they’ll likely cry the moment you place them in the crib, right? And I don’t know a single mom who wants to let her baby cry to sleep. 

So what’s the solution? How can you break the bottle feeding to sleep habit that your baby uses to get to sleep without the crying?

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WHY YOU SHOULD BREAK THE BOTTLE FEEDING TO SLEEP HABIT

When you put your baby in bed at night, it’s fine to include the bottle in the bedtime routine if your baby is under a year old. Babies under one year of age do need that one last top off feed for the night to ensure that their tummies are nice and full to be able to make it through the night. After 12 months of age, I recommend beginning the transition to the sippy cup. My favorite cup to transition from the bottle to a sippy cup is the Munchkin Miracle 360 Trainer Cup. I like these cups because they’re durable and spill proof. However, they don’t have a spout. So if your baby prefers a spout, you can try something like the NUK Learner’s Cup.

But what you really want to avoid is giving her the bottle until she falls asleep or putting her in her crib with the bottle. You do not want your baby to fall asleep with a bottle in her mouth because if she wakes up in the middle of the night, she thinks she needs that bottle again to sleep.

By this point, you’re more than familiar with this process. She wakes up. You come and feed her to sleep with the bottle or put it into the crib. Then she sucks herself back to sleep with the bottle. And this process of waking up and feeding back to sleep can repeat itself multiple times throughout the night.

WHY DOES MY BABY FALL ASLEEP WHILE BOTTLE FEEDING

Your baby has come to rely on the bottle as a “sleep prop” in order to get to sleep. And here’s why that’s the problem. We all go through multiple sleep cycles when we sleep. When we come out of one sleep cycle and go into the next, everyone comes to the surface of sleep. As adults, we’ve had plenty of practice. We know how to get ourselves back to sleep without really even knowing that we’ve had those brief wakings.

But right now, your baby relies on the bottle to get to sleep. So when she comes to those brief wakings, she’s going to more fully start to wake up. She’s going to realize that she didn’t’ have what she fell asleep with. The bottle is no longer in her mouth. And what is she going to do? She’s going to begin to cry for you to come and put the bottle back in her mouth. Because this is the only strategy that she’s known up until this point. She needs the bottle in order to fall asleep. So by breaking this old way of sleeping, and starting to introduce new, healthy independent sleep skills, that’s how we’re going to get to her fall asleep a lot more peacefully and begin to sleep all the way through the night!

I help walk you through 7 strategies that have helped me teach hundreds of parents how to teach their babies to sleep independently in my Free Download. All you have to do is type in your name, email address, and child’s date of birth; and I will send you a PDF that you can download and access on your phone when ever you need it.

HOW TO BREAK THE BOTTLE FEEDING TO SLEEP HABIT

GENTLE SLEEP TRAINING

Well mama, it’s time to start sleep training! Don’t worry, if you follow the guidelines from Live Love Sleep, I will give you some strategies and a step by step plan to deal with the two weeks that it will probably take to get your baby on track, and learn this new strategy for getting themselves to sleep.

Here’s the good news. You don’t have to let your baby cry it out!  Not only that, but you don’t have to leave the room. That’s right. You can stay with your baby if you like. We use much gentler approaches to teach your baby the skills needed to break the nightly bottle habit and begin sleeping through the night. Check out our Alternatives to the Cry It Out Method. 

But your baby really does need to start connecting the steps that are involved in putting themselves to sleep independently so that they are not relying on that bottle. Otherwise, your baby will most likely keep waking for that bottle. It could go on well into the second year so you really want to make sure you break this habit now. 

You can go in and be present and comforting as your baby learns how to fall asleep independently. Your baby will learn a new way to fall asleep and they will start sleeping a solid night, which will be better for them. It may take about two weeks. But it is definitely for the best! You can download our free guides below! From our detailed Newborn e-book to our sample schedules. We also have a detailed handout to share with you about our 7 tips to getting your baby to sleep through the night.

WHEN TO START SLEEP TRAINING

Parents often ask me WHEN is the right time to start sleep training. Babies are old enough to learn how to self soothe a little after 3 months of age. So either your baby is currently going through the 4-month sleep regression or is over a year old, NOW is the perfect time to get started. 

My general guidance is that once a baby is about 15 lbs or 6 months of age, then they are generally going to be able to physically sleep through the night. It’s just a matter of teaching them how to do so and how to transfer those calories from the nighttime hours to the daytime hours.

The good news is that if your baby still needs a night feed, you can still teach them these healthy new independent sleep skills while keeping one or two night feedings. I generally work a feed or two into my sleep plans when working with babies under 6 months old.

And if you’re still feeding you toddler to sleep, that’s ok. It’s not too late to sleep train! I work with lots of toddlers to break the bottle feeding to sleep habit too.

GETTING HELP BREAKING THE BOTTLE FEEDING TO SLEEP HABIT

I have personally worked with hundreds of families who have tried on their own to break the bottle feeding to sleep habit but feel like nothing has worked for them. As a sleep coach, my job is to create a customized sleep plan that is going to work for YOUR BABY and YOUR FAMILY. Every baby is different and they all response a little differently. This is why we work together closely for the couple weeks that it will take your baby to learn how to fall asleep and stay asleep without the bottle so that you don’t have to figure this out on your own. 

If you want to learn some easy, proven strategies for getting your child to sleep and stay asleep without requesting the bottle, I’d love to chat further!

Simply give me a call at (832) 640-5492, or check out our Baby Sleep Services to get started. I’m here to help!

To healthy sleep,

Kaley Medina

Founder of Live Love Sleep

Certified Baby and Toddler Sleep Consultant
(832) 640-5492
livelovesleep.com