Explore why breastfeeding becomes a sleep association and how nursing to sleep impacts infant sleep cycles, causing babies to wake frequently throughout the night.

Sleep is a skill, just like walking or talking. Giving your baby the space to learn this skill is actually a gift, and you can keep your breastfeeding relationship while still getting a full night's rest.
The most successful method to sleep train and infant, who is super reliant on their breast-feeding mother to go to bed while they go to sleep and breast-feed throughout the night







A sleep association is a habit or tool a baby uses to drift off to sleep, much like an adult uses a favorite pillow. For many breastfed babies, nursing becomes this primary tool. When a baby relies on nursing to fall asleep, they often struggle to return to sleep without it when they experience natural wakeups between sleep cycles throughout the night.
Babies naturally experience tiny wakeups every 45 to 60 minutes as they transition between sleep cycles. If nursing is their primary sleep trigger, they will look for that same nursing session to click back into sleep. While it may seem like hunger, they are often just seeking the familiar sleep association they used to fall asleep initially.
Not necessarily. While parents often assume night wakings are due to starvation, research indicates that by four to six months, most babies are physically capable of going at least six hours without a feed. Often, the baby is not hungry but is instead relying on nursing as a sleep association to help them transition back into a deep sleep.
Creato da alumni della Columbia University a San Francisco
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