Feeding your baby to sleep – where’s the problem?

Night has fallen. The baby has been cleaned and given a warm water bath. You have made him wear a set of clean night time clothes and are singing a lullaby to make him sleep soundly. You are peacefully feeding your child in the bedroom with lights off. The baby falls asleep immediately you put him on the cot. After three hours he wakes up again, you breastfeed him and then he goes back to slumber once again. This is fulfilling for both of you as well as your baby. But have you ever pondered whether this is the right way? No, of course not and this is likely to cause future problems for both of you as well as your baby. You might feel that breastfeeding is the most ideal way and is a healthy routine which you are following day in and day out. But this is not true. This technique might sound easy for you since you feel the child sleeps peacefully after you have breastfeed him. But the child might form sleep associations which are not good for the child and this would later develop into a habit. Most of the babies wake up many times during the night. If you have made it a habit to feed your baby, every time he wakes up, this would become a routine habit and the child would feel that only he has been fed he will be able to sleep soundly. This is obviously not the right way to make the baby sleep peacefully. Whether the child is made to sleep separately on the child cot or whether the child shares your same cot, matters would get worse as you would have to wake up many times at midnight.