Am I creating a bad habit?

janicemarieh · July 2012

DD just turned 6 months and for the past week or so, she has started falling asleep when she is drinking her bottles. At first it was a fluke thing - like once or twice - but now it seems to be happening more and more frequently. I know that always giving a baby a bottle to go to sleep = a need for a bottle to sleep all the time. We never did this with DD and she never needed a bottle to go to sleep, but is this new "habit" of falling asleep while eating going to make her dependent on the bottle? Is she past the age where I need to worry about that? I have tried stopping and burping her and stuff to try to keep her up, but she will sort of sleep through me burping etc. too.

hizah05 · July 2012

It may become something she depends on but I don't see this being any different than people who use pacifiers, rocking, nursing, etc... to get their babies to sleep. I think it all depends on how you feel about it. I wouldn't worry about it unless she absolutely has to have it to fall asleep though. Might just be comforting at times or she's just really tired.

My son falls asleep nursing quite often but he will also fall asleep without it so I don't think I'm creating a habit yet

matt'sbride · July 2012

This started happening with us too, and we thought it was great at first because she would go to sleep so easily for the night (with mid-night waking several times). It got to be so bad that we decided to sleep train her. (At this time, we still didn't see fallling asleep with the bottle as a problem. There were many factors that went into the decision to sleep train her, most importantly of course, was that we felt she was ready.)

She has responded very well and one of the reasons was because we had to keep her awake during he last feeding and put her down awake. We still rock her (minimally) while feeding, but we turn on a lamp beside the rocker so that it isn't dark. She stays awake now and sleeps through the night again...finally! I just hope she keeps it up! HTH!

nhenry8078 · July 2012

My LO gets a bottle right before he goes to bed. He used to fall asleep while eating. I would him down in his crib and he would stay asleep. For the past few nights he has his eyes closed but when I put him in his crib he wakes up. Not crying just awake. I turn on the mobile and leave and don't go back in until he is fully crying. During the day he usually falls asleep with the paci. Sometimes that doesn't work though. YOu could try stopping the feeding when she closes her eyes or starts to slow down, if she wants more she should wake back up.

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