7PM feed not accidental parenting?

[ashersmom]

Hello!  I was just reading up on The Baby Whisperer Solves all Your Problems and came across a statement that I had never paid attention to before....on pg. 230 it reads:

 "I suggest feed, bath, and bed, but you could also switch the order and do the bath first.  It depends on the baby.  Some get wound up by a bath, so it's better to do it before the feed; others get drowsy and sometimes even fall asleep at the bedtime feed.  You have to figure out which works best with your child.  Either way, the seven o'clock feed is not the same as accidental parenting, in which he must feed at EVERY sleep period in order to fall asleep."

So I'm wondering if it's okay to feed him to sleep every night...and if so...how does he learn how to go to sleep for the night by himself??  Just wondering if I've misinterpreted this!!

Thanks!
Beth

[Maddy's Mum]

I must confess  :oops:  that I have let Mads fall asleep during the feeding before bed ever since she was a few weeks old and it has never had a knock on effect on her ability to put herself to sleep. As she got older, sometimes she would nod off and others she would stay awake, so we had a mixture of putting her down awake and then she would send herself off and just putting her down asleep.

I think it worked for us because once she learned how to put herself to sleep and self soothe and had those skills to fall back on even if she did wake up when we put her in her cot dozy or asleep...does that make sense???

HTH!
Dee
x

[ashersmom]

Yeah---that helps.  Asher can't put himself to sleep, though....we always rock him and he cries until he falls asleep.  We're thinking of trying PU/PD as soon as we're confident we'll see it through.  In the meantime, I DID let him fall asleep while BF last night and put him in bed...but he woke up and needed to be rocked more than usual.  Hmmm....what to do.

[Deb_in_oz]

the key to this is to work on establishing good sleep habits for daytime sleeps first - work on getting to the point where you are putting him in cot drowsy but awake for daytime sleeps.

you can still do a bath before the last feed and just see what he does - what i did when alex was young was to feed her for as long as she wanted before nightime sleep and then when she fell asleep on he breast (happened 90% of the time - but she did always went into cot awake for naps) i woudl have my husband come and gently take her  from me and he woudl burp her and put her to bed - the burping usually roused her enough without fully waking her up - and then he woudl put her down and shh for a few seconds and she would resettle IN THE COT.