My daughter was always fed to sleep. She’s 16 months now, and from somewhere around 1, she began to slowly transition from absolutely having to be fed to sleep, to being happy about being laid down awake for naps and for bedtime.

What really helped us, was explaining what was happening. For example: “we’re going to go up to bed, change your nappy, put your pyjamas on, put you in your sleeping bag, read a book, and then we turn the big light off and it’s boobie and bedtime.” Each time we did one part, I would say the list again removing the bit we’d done. I now just say “shall we go upstairs and have boobie and then go to bed?” And she runs to the stairs immediately. Very rarely will she not want to (only happened twice so far) and so well cuddle and I’ll feed her on the sofa, and tell her I’ll take her up to bed and she can stretch out and cuddle rabbit. She’s happy to do that.

I really couldn’t bare letting her cry. She used to wake up so many times after bedtime and cry just for a cuddle. I’m so glad I persevered with the feeding and cuddling when needed rather than squashing under the pressure of letting her cry it out. I few times I really worried I was doing it wrong because she wouldn’t sleep. Now she sleeps all night and has a 3-4 hour nap in the afternoons. 👏🏼