Hi! I’m Dana Obleman, creator of The Sleep Sense Program. If you’d rather read than watch, I’ve transcribed the text of this video below.

This week’s question comes from Lisa:

“Adam is five and a half months old and has been pretty good during the day but still isn’t sleeping through the night. He wakes about four times a night; his longest sleep is three hours. My girlfriend says it’s because I’m breastfeeding. How do I get him to sleep through the night?”

Okay, I do not feel the fact that he’s breastfeeding has anything to do with it. It makes me laugh a little bit when people say that formula-fed babies sleep through the night faster than breastfed babies do. You know, I just don’t find that that’s the case. If formula is going to buy you any extra time, it’s usually only an hour.

It’s funny because it’s not meant to be in their stomach. It doesn’t last forever and it might be a little bit more difficult to digest and last a little bit longer, but not much. So instead of every three hours, you might be getting up every four, which still isn’t great, okay? So erase that from your mind. It has nothing to do with your breastfeeding. Let’s see if we can work this out.

My guess is that he breastfeeds to sleep and that might be more the issue that you’re dealing with Lisa; he’s using breastfeeding as his vehicle back into sleep probably at bedtime and definitely through the night. Now, you haven’t mentioned his weight but I’m just going to assume that he is a healthy happy five and a half month old.

In my experience, I have seen many five and half month olds who can sleep all night and by all night, I mean 12 hours without a feeding. That may be something you want to discuss with your doctor to see if you have the green light on that. Definitely, how you feed needs to change a little and I would start at bedtime. Set up a nice bedtime routine that’s step-orientated so that his mind and body fall into line and it becomes predictable for him, every night is the same.

If there is a feed in the routine somewhere make sure that he stays awake through the feed, okay. A lot of people and even people who write to me and say, “Well, she falls asleep during the feed but then I wake her up after the fact.” You really can’t even do that, especially if you’re trying to break a nurse-sleep association.

Why let her fall asleep there? It almost doesn’t seem fair because she falls asleep at the breast but you don’t let her stay there; you wake her up. That can really frustrate a baby. What you want to do is break the connection that feeding has anything to do with sleep at all. Yes, it’s a nice lovely time, its cuddle time with mom, it’s feeding, but that’s only two jobs. It shouldn’t be involved with sleep at all.

So make sure he stays awake through the feed, tickle him, talk to him, take him on and off whatever you have to do to keep him with you and then he goes to his crib awake. Your first goal is to get him to fall asleep without relying on you at bedtime. I would suggest the ‘stay in the room’ method. It’s outlined in the program, moving every three days until you’re out of the room and letting him learn how to do this more independently.

Then for the night awakenings, you might just want to see how it goes. Often by just teaching a baby the skills he needs for getting to sleep at bedtime changes the whole atmosphere of the night, meaning the stretches start to get longer and longer naturally until a month from now, they’re not there anymore at all. That would be the best scenario. For many people, I say, well, why don’t you just see what happens? Really focus on the bedtime part and then kind of let the night emerge on its own and see how it goes.

There’s no reason why he needs four feedings a night. I think we can all agree that that’s too many. So I’d cut it down to one, two at the most, and you might decide yourself what times those are and when they’re going to happen.

Don’t nurse him back to sleep in the night either because you don’t want him to think, “I’ll do it myself at bedtime and then I’ll take the easy road all through the rest of the night.” You really want him to master his skill and use it 100% of the time.

So do the same thing. Turn on the light, watch him, poke him, tickle him, and talk to him, whatever you have to do to keep him awake through the night feed then back to the crib awake. Give it a week or two, and if nights are improving, great! You’re on the right track don’t worry.

If they’re not improving, meaning he’s still up randomly four times a night and nothing is really improving or it feels worse, then you know that the feeding is probably the issue. He can’t quite figure out what’s going on.
Sometimes he wakes up and gets a feed, other times he wakes up and he doesn’t. Some babies can become confused by that wake up randomly all over the place wondering, “It is feed time isn’t it? I don’t know I’m going to see what happens.” If that’s the case, you’ll have to consider the option of just pulling his night feeds cold turkey and just getting him consistently sleeping through the night.

Those are your two options. It starts with bedtime and then the night follows, so I encourage you to get started. Thanks a lot for your question and sleep well.