One of the most common misconceptions about sleep training and breastfeeding is the belief that they can’t be done together. Many parents feel they need to completely wean their baby before starting sleep training, but this simply isn’t true. Today, I’m here to debunk that myth and explain how you can successfully sleep train while continuing to breastfeed.
Sleep training is all about teaching your baby the essential skills needed for self-soothing and independent sleep. It applies whether your baby is breastfed, bottle-fed, or has already transitioned away from night feedings. The type of feeding isn’t the focus; the key is helping your little one develop healthy sleep habits. What truly affects a baby’s sleep patterns are the associations they form around falling asleep, rather than whether they’re breastfed or bottle-fed. Many babies, especially between 8-12 months, rely on feeding as a comforting mechanism, which can lead to frequent night time wake-ups.
Sleep associations are rooted in the way babies’ brains learn through repetition and predictability. From a neurological perspective, babies thrive on routine because it helps them make sense of the world, especially during times of rapid brain development. When a specific action, like feeding, consistently occurs right before sleep, the baby’s brain begins to link the two as a cause-and-effect relationship. Over time, this connection becomes hardwired, forming a sleep association. During the lighter phases of sleep, which occur multiple times a night, a baby who has developed a strong association with feeding may wake fully and signal for it as a way to recreate the environment that helped them fall asleep initially. This behavior is part of a feedback loop where the baby relies on external cues, like feeding, instead of developing transitioning between sleep cycles independently.
At Babywinkz, we will work out whether your baby is waking due to hunger or for the comfort of nursing. Night feeds are generally no longer necessary after six months of age (sometimes health needs may require night feeds to continue longer). At this stage, it’s often the case that babies wake due to the sleep association rather than hunger. The wake-ups that occur during transitions between sleep cycles become more pronounced. This repeated prolonged waking then disrupts the sleep patterns of both yourself and your baby, leading to fragmented and poor-quality rest for everyone.
Sleep training focuses on teaching your baby to develop independent sleep skills by gently breaking these associations. This can still be accomplished even whilst you have necessary night feeds. If night feeds are not necessary, your baby can develop healthy sleep habits while still allowing you to continue breastfeeding during appropriate times of the day. For parents who want to continue night feeds by choice, it’s important to create a structure that supports those feeds without making them the only way your baby knows to fall asleep. Importantly, sleep training does not mean giving up breastfeeding altogether. Rather, the key is to ensure that feeding isn’t the only way a baby knows how to fall asleep.