What do you do if your DS (9mo) does cry when you try other ways of putting him down apart from the breast??
Even if you wait until he’s almost out and do the Gentle Removal thing?
Even after many attempts?
And he really screams the house down and then wakes up for good.

I''m with you. I have the same problem with my 4 mth old. It has got progressively worse since I started the Pantley gentle removal plan and the "get them to sleep no matter how" during the day. I only had a problem with length of daytime naps before I tried this. Thomas used to sleep 10 hours at night. Now he naps no longer than 30 mins and needs the boob and at night, wakes every hour. I'm with you - frustrated and going nowhere fast with this method. We're discussing CIO from tomorrow! I hope you find the answer before you have to CIO too. Sorry I have none for you.

Hi Tigerius,

Sorry to hear about all the crying. One thing that worked with me along with gentle removal was having quite loud (well not loud exactly, but enough to be heard above the crying!!) rhythmic music ready. As soon as I popped dd off the nipple I would quickly stand up with her in my arms and start the music, then rock her till she fell asleep. I've done this since she was about 5 or 6 months - not all the time, but after we've had setbacks etc. To start with it didn't always work and I would have to either feed her a bit more or keep rocking her for a few minutes, but eventually things got better. In the end I could pop her off, she'd have a bit of a grizzle, I'd start the music and she'd go straight to sleep. By doing this I managed to really cut down her nighttime feeding until I was only feeding her for 5-10 mins at a time.

I still do this now. She's 18 months old and although she's day weaned, still wakes up once or twice a night to be fed. So I've gone back to gentle removal and music and am gradually reducing the length of time I feed her for. She will always cry when I pop her off (mainly because I'm timing the length of the feed so I remove her when she's still in the middle of having a good old suck!), but the music nearly always works to settle her down.

HTH and hope things get better.

Suzey

p.s. I tried shhing and key words instead of music, but that just made her really upset. Music was far better.

hi all,
i'm so excited i have to share our progress with you.
you all know my story (let's face it, who doesn't).
for two night's running, my ds has broken his early evening 30min waking cycle (from 7:00pm-10:30/11:00pm he'd wake and require settling [boob only] every 30-40min) and had two blocks of two hours sleep each night.
he has gone down in his cot (that means i PUT HIM 'DOWN' in the cot!!!)
for months he hasn't gone down in the cot or anywhere, i have had to lie with him and sneak my nipple out of his mouth once soundly sleeping.

and he had one solid block of two hours sleep each night! he still woke every hour, BUT this is still a MAJOR shift for us.

he is giving in to sleep much more easily and i'm able to pop him off the nipple earlier & earlier with a good success rate.

there are many factors, which i went into in alarming detail in my last post, but i think the single biggest factor is the removal technique.
i started sneakier than sneaky, then got more and more brave and as i did this, he began to learn that he actually can finish off falling asleep by himself. he rolls over and i think he's going to roll back rooting madly like before, but increasingly he just stays there and falls asleep.

our babies are so different, so i don't know if it can work for you, but i sincerely hope something does.
i felt for so long that we were going backward (at high speed), but now i have hope that things can change. it's painfully slow, but it's happening for us at last.

hugs,
love&light to you

just reading that back,
i didn't mean it to sound so sort of upbeat & happy. i don't want to in any way dishonour your experiences.
i just wanted to share something positive with you in the hope that it could help.

love&light

Try tickling your baby after you gently remove or while you are gently removing the breast. Or if your DS is asleep, try tickling him awake and then putting him down.

Also, I don't know if you are having the same problems during the day, but try not feeding at nap time, but rather when you DS wakes up from a nap. It might help break the association.

I know it's probably not what you want to hear, but just so you know, my DD went to sleep on her own and didn't sleep through the night until a few weeks ago. It's not an end all cure for every baby. I was positive it would be for us--I did everything "right", but my baby girl decided to sleep through when she wanted to and not a moment before.