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Feed to sleep association ruined my life, until I found out it wasn't actually the problem Laura is 7 months old and the only way to get her to sleep is to nurse her And honestly? For the first few months I didn't even see it as a problem Because it was just so simple she'd fuss, I'd nurse her, she'd sleep Every single time no guessing, no trying ten different things just feed her and she goes down And honestly it felt good like I was the only one who could give her exactly what she needed That closeness, that quiet in the dark, just the two of us And I felt like I had figured something out like I was doing it right. So I kept doing it And it did work beautifully, for a while Then somewhere around four months it started to shift Because before that laura used to sleep five sometimes even six hours straight and then one night it was suddenly two hours I thought it was just a bad night because it happened sometimes but then the next night the same thing and she was waking up more throughout the night And Laura barely used to wake up maybe once a night but now it was 3 sometimes 4 times a night The stretches slowly got shorter and the wake ups happened more often And Laura got more picky about what she needed Not just about nursing, but she wouldn't even take the pacifier anymore and It had to be me holding her or else she would start crying It’s like she knew my smell, my body, the exact way I held her Because when my husband would try to comfort her before bed she'd be okay for maybe three minutes. But then her head would start turning, and her little mouth would start searching for my breast And by minute five she was having a full meltdown and he'd bring her to me apologizing with his eyes and there was nothing to apologize for because there was nothing he could do. So every time she woke up at night it was my job Just mine And by seven months she was waking every hour all night long. And I couldn't figure out why. Because nothing had changed it was the same routine, same feed, same everything I hadn't done anything differently. So why was it suddenly not working the way it used to? what changed at four months it felt like a wall we hit out of nowhere And I kept going back to that question and I couldn't find an answer. And honestly I didn’t have time to find an answer because the night wake ups just kept getting worse I was running on maybe three hours of broken sleep a night for months. And here's the part that made me feel insane Laura was good at falling asleep. Because at bedtime she'd nurse, get drowsy, I'd put her down and she'd close her eyes and go to sleep barely any crying. Sometimes none at all but only if I nursed her before So I knew she had the skill I'd watched her use it every single night. Which meant every time I googled what was wrong, I landed in the same place Feed to sleep association you've created a dependency she doesn't know how to connect sleep cycles without the breast you need to break it. And I believed that how could I not. It made sense I had nursed her to sleep from the day she was born because everyone told me it was the right thing to do And now she was seven months old and couldn't get through a single 60 minute sleep cycle without me it wasn’t hard to understand that I had done this to her So I tried to undo it. I did three nights of modified Ferber and I'd set a timer and go in every few minutes, put my hand on her chest, shush her, and leave without picking her up And surprisingly it worked great the first night she actually slept more then an hour not great but I thought it was good progress But on night two it was horrible Laura ending up crying for 30 minutes straight before i gave in again And night three I lasted about twenty minutes before I was sitting on the floor in the hallway outside her door listening to her cry, completely falling apart I just couldn't do it I went in and picked her up and nursed her and she went quiet immediately and I sat in the rocking chair in the dark holding her thinking I was never going to fix this. So I tried making her last feed bigger so she'd be fuller going into the night I even tried keeping her up later so she'd be more tired I tried moving bedtime earlier and tried using white noise and I probably Spent two hundred dollars on things other moms in Facebook groups swore had fixed the exact same problem But nothing ever worked for Laura She'd still wake at 11 still wake at 1 at 2:30 and at 4 and every single time the only thing that worked was nursing her back down. No bottle no pacifier, we'd tried every brand and she refused all of them just the breast just me. By the time Laura was seven months old I had stopped trying to fix it. I was just surviving it. And the worst part wasn't even the lack of sleep anymore It was that I had started dreading it. Every time I heard her cry I knew what was coming and my body would tense up before I even got out of bed And my breasts were sore from how often she was feeding there were nights I'd sit in that rocking chair and just stare at the wall, completely numb, waiting for it to be over. But one night around 2 AM, after the third feed, I couldn't get back to sleep I was too wired and too exhausted at the same time I opened a mom group I'd joined months ago and I just started typing. About the nursing. About how Laura wouldn't settle for anyone but me. And about how my husband would try to hold her and she'd last three minutes before she knew it wasn't me. About how I was feeding her every 60 minutes and couldn't tell anymore if she was actually hungry or if I had just built feed to sleep association About how exhausted I was. About the dark thoughts I'd started having that I was too ashamed to say out loud. About feeling like I was losing my mind. I hit post and closed the app I honestly didn't expect anyone to respond. But a few minutes later I got a DM from someone named Jennifer and that's when everything changed. "I know exactly what you're going through," she wrote. "Six months ago my daughter and I were in the exact same spot." “I need to ask does Laura fall asleep fine at bedtime but can't stay asleep?" "Does Laura fall asleep fine at bedtime but can't stay asleep?" Yes, I typed. That's the thing I can't figure out. She goes down on her own and she clearly knows how to fall asleep So why doesn't it work in the middle of the night and she was completely fine up until she turned four months old It was like a switch flipped. Every mom group I've been in says it's the nursing association, that I created this, and I just don't know how to fix it. "Ok well first off the nursing association isn't what's causing her to wake up" "I know that's what Google tells you. I thought the same thing for months” “And I Kept trying to break it, trying different methods, convinced I had created this problem. But it's not something you did. It's not a behavior problem at all. It's physical." I asked her what she meant. "So when babies first fall asleep at bedtime they drop straight into deep heavy sleep” “Nothing wakes them in that first stretch that's why your daughter usually goes down easy and stays down for that first stretch without a peep” “But after that first cycle the rest of the night is lighter. Much lighter and during light sleep the body is sensitive to everything. Including breathing." I kept reading. "And If there's any resistance in the airway at all, even a tiny amount you can't see or hear, breathing starts to feel harder and heavier” “Nothing dramatic No congestion just small invisible friction that makes the body work a little harder than it should” “And when that happens during light sleep the nervous system picks it up as a signal. Body tenses. Baby wakes." I sat there reading that over and over. I asked if that was why Laura was waking every hour. Not because she was hungry. "Right. Not because she was hungry. Think about it. When you nurse her she falls back asleep. But not because she needed to be full” “But because nursing calms the nervous system down enough to drop her back into deep sleep. for one more cycle” “But then an hour later the light sleep phase comes back, the breathing feels off again, the body tenses again, and she wakes again." Ok but why did it happen when she turned 4 months why not sooner? "Because before four months babies spend most of the night in deep sleep” “They have to because they are in there extremely early stages of development and their sleep cycles are shorter and heavier” “But around four months the brain matures and sleep cycles start looking more like toddler sleep, longer stretches of light sleep between each cycle” “That's when the airway sensitivity starts to matter it was always there but Four months is just when the sleep became light enough for the body to feel it." I felt something move in my chest when I read that. Because it was the first explanation that matched exactly what I watched happen every single night Laura wasn't waking because of something I'd done she was waking because of something physical happening in her body that I couldn't see”. And nursing wasn't the cause. It was just the only thing I'd found that calmed her system down enough to get through it. Ok but how do i fix it ? "There are two parts to fixing this and most people only ever fix one” “The first part everyone knows calm the nervous system that's why lavender helps, why warm baths help, why white noise is recommended” “You're lowering the stress response so the body can relax into sleep” “But the second part is the part nobody talks about keeping the airway clear enough that breathing stays smooth through those light sleep phases” “So the nervous system never gets that signal in the first place." How do you do that? "Fir needle most people have never connected to sleep. It helps open airways, clears the tiny resistance that builds up, makes breathing feel easier” “It’s like eucalyptus for adults when you're stuffed up, but fir needle is gentle enough for a baby” And when you combine it with lavender you're covering both sides lavender calms the nervous system so they can fall asleep” “And fir needle keeps the airways clear so they can stay asleep. Both parts handled instead of just one." I had never heard of fir needle. "I didn’t either but then i started researchingn about it and most people haven't,It's not something you'll find in your average baby product.” “A pure form of it is actually really hard to come by most things you'll find just use lavender and call it a day because that's what sells fir needle is the part nobody's figured out to put in yet." So where did you find something that has fir needle and lavender in it? "I found a sleep cream called Slumberlee it has lavender and fir needle together, with jojoba and olive oil as the base” “And I started putting a small amount on my daughter's chest and the bottoms of her feet before bed” “Within three days she was sleeping six hour stretches. Within a week she was sleeping through the night." Honestly I didn't want to get my hopes up. I had been let down too many times. I'd tried too many things that didn't work. But I couldn't stop thinking about what she said “Because for the first time something had actually explained what I was watching happen every single night and if she was right, the nursing wasn't the problem I'd been trying to solve” So I asked Jennifer for the link. I ordered it that night. And I ordered it and it came two days later The first night I was so nervous so I only rubbed a small amount on Laura's chest and the bottoms of her feet right before her bedtime feed” I did the same routine as always. She nursed, got drowsy, I put her down. Asleep by 7:30 like normal. And to my surprise she didn't wake up at 9 I thought ok this is strange But she didn't wake up at 11 either so I decided to get a little rest hoping maybe it would last longer But then I woke up on my own at 12:51 AM no crying just my own body jolting awake from habit, braced for a feed that hadn't come” I layed there in the dark listening to the monitor. Just Laura's breathing slow and steady. That night she slept until 3:15 that first night. One feed. Back down until 6:20. And by the end of the first week she was going from 7:30 to somewhere between 5 and 6 most mornings. Laura is still breastfed still won't take a bottle or a pacifier none of that changed. What changed was that her body could finally stay in sleep without her nervous system going on alert every 90 minutes. She was getting the sleep she needed. And so was I. And I'm not saying this will be the same for every baby. I'm not a doctor and I'm not making promises. But if you're where I was. Nursing every hour all night and your husband handing her back because she won't settle for anyone but you convinced you built this and can't fix it. Running on nothing. The thing I wish someone had told me earlier is that the nursing might not be the cause It might just be the only thing you'd found that worked around the real problem. And the real problem might be a lot simpler than you think. Thank you for reading my story if you’d like to try what worked for Laura I’ll link slumberlee here https://slumberlee.com/products/organic-sleep-cream