Guide to Sleep Training a 6 Month Old Breastfed Baby
As a natural living mom, a Lactation Consultant, and Perinatal Mental Health Specialist, I get asked a lot about sleep training a breastfed baby.
And honestly, I remember wondering the exact thing myself when I had my first baby, and the tiredness hit me hard.
After using gentle parenting sleep training with my children and teaching thousands of parents how to do the same, I’m here to tell you that yes, you can.
But most importantly, I want to reassure you that you can get more sleep for yourself and your baby without using crying-it-out or other methods that do not align with your gentle parenting lifestyle.
My babies were all breastfed babies. I breastfed each of my kids to 3+ years old and still managed to get the sleep I needed while breastfeeding (and even cosleeping).
And while at first, I didn’t mind regulating myself to how they slept, after months and months, I eventually became overwhelmed and exhausted with the bit of sleep I was getting and had to find a solution that worked well for both of us.
Eventually, as I became more advanced in gentle parenting concepts and secure attachment, I took on the process of sleep training my breastfed baby using transitions and comfort measures. And it worked.
I’ve taught other mothers how to do the same and will be teaching you in this article. Because if you’re reading this, you’re tired. And you’re wondering if there’s a way to get better sleep for yourself and your breastfed baby. So let’s jump in.
Natural parenting sleep training is possible.
I used sleep training aligned with secure attachment and did not involve leaving my baby to cry it out for any period without my presence or comfort.
The sleep training for my breastfed babies also did not reduce my breastmilk supply. I’ll share ways to use gentle parenting sleep training for your own breastfed baby with you.
Is it possible to sleep train a breastfed baby?
As I mentioned, you can sleep train a breastfed baby using gentle parenting sleep training.
I want to tell you that you do not need to sleep train if you do not desire to do so. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with how your baby sleeps if you are comfortable continuing to sleep the way you both currently are.
There’s no must when it comes to sleep training a breastfed baby.
You should only consider sleep training your breastfed baby if it is becoming a problem for your family and you’re reaching a level of burnout that makes you an overwhelmed mom.
So, you won’t find in this article any references to how you must teach your baby to self-soothe or that you must sleep train your baby, or else you’re not teaching your baby how to sleep. Your baby already knows how to sleep.
When should I sleep train, my baby?
While you can sleep train as early as four months old and still keep a connection and security between you and your baby, I have found that it’s much easier to sleep train when you begin at 6 months of age or older.
Before the age of four months old, your baby’s needs and wants are the same. Meaning, what your baby want is genuinely also what your baby biologically needs.
Between 4-6 months of age, babies begin to develop preferences, and some of those wants now become a strong preference based on association. It may no longer be an actual need, but it is most certainly an association.
Again, nothing wrong with that unless it’s becoming overwhelming and challenging to be the mother you want to be for your baby.
Do breastfed babies ever sleep through the night?
Yes absolutely, there are breastfed babies that will sleep through the night without any sleep training at all. My third baby was precisely like this. He was sleeping very long periods of night sleep before he was a month old.
Whether your breastfed baby will sleep through the night has nothing to do with your baby breastfeeding. All babies will at one point sleep through the night. Up to 80% of babies will sleep through the night by 12 months old. And those that don’t will achieve sleeping through the night by 2 years old.
If this time frame is not sustainable for you, you can use gentle parenting sleep training.
Do breastfed babies wake up more?
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Maybe you heard that breastfed babies wake up more at night. And you may have wondered, during the many night wakings, if it might be better to switch to formula so you can both get more sleep.
But the research shows that breastfed babies start life by waking up more frequently at night, and then by the time they are 6 months old there is little difference in night waking between a breastfed baby and a formula-fed baby.
So hopefully, that gives you some comfort in knowing that your breastfed baby is not always going to have as many wakings as those early months.
Why do formula babies sleep longer?
I feel there’s always that one friend who has that one baby formula-fed, and her baby sleeps all night long. And she didn’t even need to do anything to sleep train!
The research shows that formula-fed babies go longer between feedings, and that is because formula tends to fill their tummies for longer. But, when it comes to sleep, the research shows that after 6 months, both breastfed babies and formula-fed babies have the same probability of sleeping through the night on their own.
Your friend has a lovely scenario but not one created because she does not breastfeed.
Should I let baby fall asleep at breast?
Yes and no. It depends on what is working well for you and what is no longer working well for you in your breastfeeding relationship with your baby and sleep.
Your breasts are incredibly comforting to your baby. And, breastmilk has a component that induces sleep, not just for your baby but for you as well. You may have noticed that you feel sleepy when you’re breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding provides comforting sucking and scent to your baby. So it’s no wonder most breastfed babies will easily fall asleep while nursing at the breast!
During those first few months, I encourage moms to understand that their baby’s desire to be at the breast is a biological need. The more the baby is on the breast and touching your baby, the more brain neuron connections your baby’s brain makes.
Breastfeeding provides warmth and coziness to your baby. So yes, naturally, they will fall asleep.
If you’re worried that falling asleep at the breast will create a sleep association that later you’d like to change, then I recommend that you gently pull your baby off the breast, very slowly, right before your baby is about to fall asleep.
If your baby protests, latch on, comfort, and try again (and again). This is part of how I was able to teach my babies how to fall asleep without being at the breast.
How long does it take to sleep train a breastfed baby?
I know that when you’ve reached the point of being exhausted and desperate to get more sleep, you want a quick fix as soon as possible. But, using gentle parenting sleep training is not a quick fix.
I advocate for building a strong, secure attachment with your baby so that your baby finds comfort and security in knowing that its needs are met by the people who love her.
And I refuse to justify using harsh or crying it out methods by using words like “Sleep is important.” This is no way to make anyone feel guilty for using crying it out methods (I even tried it for a day with my firstborn before I learned that I could achieve better sleep without crying it out).
As I mentioned, your baby knows how to sleep. Does your baby know how to sleep how you’d like your baby to sleep? Maybe not, but your baby didn’t forget how to sleep or was born not knowing how to close its eyes and go into a deep sleep.
What we are doing is not teaching your baby to sleep. Instead, we are making transitional changes to how you put your baby to sleep so that you can create new associations to sleep.
How do you sleep train a breastfed baby?
Now let’s get to the step-by-step process of sleep training a breastfed baby using gentle parenting sleep training.
This is the method I used and what I teach exhausted moms who want to sleep train their breastfed baby.
1) Track your baby’s sleep cues.
This step is the first step and very important as it will teach you how to know your baby’s awake times.
You can not know the wake times of your baby simply by looking at the time between naps. Why? Because often, when a mom is having challenges with sleep, her baby is also most likely skipping much-needed naps. So we are tracking instead sleep cues.
5 Common Baby Sleep Cues to Track:
- Rubbing eyes
- Yawning
- Dazed look (that far away look your baby sometimes gets when tired)
- Disinterested in what baby was doing (if only for a brief moment)
- Frowning
- Cranky/fussy
When you see your baby doing these, note the time on a journal even if your baby does not fall asleep right away. Do this for 4-7 days straight. You only need to track the first cue, not the subsequent cues that happen as the baby gets more and more tired.
After 4-7 days, look carefully at your tracking (it might even help to do this on a spreadsheet).
This is your analyzing part of sleep training. You want to analyze your data (aka sleep cues tracking) to see the average number of hours that your baby had between sleep cues. That’s your baby’s waketime.
Again you are not tracking first nap to second nap time, as your baby may have needed that nap much earlier. Instead, you are monitoring sleep cues.
Sleep cues are when your baby is ideally ready to sleep (yes, even if your baby didn’t fall asleep immediately).
2) Start a routine based on your baby’s waketime.
Now that you have your baby’s awake times, you’ll want to start a routine centered around the wake times.
Sample routine for a 6 months old breastfed baby.
Let’s assume your baby has a 2-3 hour wake period.
6:30 am: Wake up
8:30 a.m – 10:00 am.: Nap time
10am – 12:30pm: Wake period
12:30 pm – 2:30 pm: Nap time
2:30pm – 5:30 pm: Wake period
5:30pm – 6:00 pm: Bedtime routine
6:30 pm: Bedtime
While I wrote above exact times, I want you to think of your routine as a flow to your day. Each day will not have the exact times, but it will flow with wake times and nap times throughout the day.
However, having a routine will help you plan to ensure your baby gets good restful naps.
The other important thing about having a routine is that babies thrive in routines. Children get comfort in knowing that you know what’s happening next and in the consistency of a pattern.
3) Nurse your baby 30 minutes before sleep times.
When you have tracked your baby’s sleep cues and began your new daily routine for at least a week, then you’re ready to move on to the next step of nursing your baby half hour before sleep times.
I prefer that you first get comfortable with your daily routine for at least a week before moving to this step. It will be much harder to do this step if you start before establishing and practicing your new daily routine.
Because now you’ll know when your baby is going to be ready to sleep again, you’ll plan to nurse your baby a full feeding about a half-hour before your baby is ready to sleep.
This practice is to ensure that your baby gets its full feeding and your breastmilk supply stays strong. In addition, nursing a half hour before sleep time will start getting you ready for the next step in sleep training your breastfed baby.
Will you nurse your baby at nap time again? Yes, you can certainly do that, and I encourage you to do so if it has been part of how your baby falls asleep. We make only one change at a time.
4) Create new sleep associations.
You might find that when you’ve done steps 1-3 that your baby is already sleeping much better, and you do not need to continue sleep training. But if that is not the case, we will now teach your baby new sleep associations using very gentle transitions.
Start with only one association and do not move to the next one until your baby has successfully transitioned from the sleep association it previously had.
So for this scenario, let’s use falling asleep at the breast since it’s a prevalent sleep association for breastfed babies.
You’ll want to start by nursing your baby at the beginning of your bedtime or naptime routine enough to fulfill your baby and provide comfort. Remember, you’ve already done an entire nursing session just half-hour ago.
I recommend moms to have a short and sweet bedtime routine, so your comfort nursing session will happen first, followed by a board book (even for a 6 month old baby), followed by what you will replace the nursing to sleep.
Examples of what you can do to get your breastfed baby to sleep.
- Rock standing up or on a rocking chair
- Sway
- Gentle pats to bum or back
- Use a baby carrier
- Bounce on a yoga ball
Being consistent is going to be really important for this step. Create a comforting environment in your baby’s sleep place and stay calm and consistent as you do one of the above comfort measures until your baby falls asleep.
Should your baby cry during this process, you’ll want to continue holding and loving on your baby.
Your baby will be loved and reassured during this process, right in your arms (doing one of the above comfort measures). This signals to your baby that it is safe and secure, even though the protest changes how you put your baby to sleep.
Should you begin to have a hard time with this step and feel grounded and calm, ask yourself if you need to wait longer before changing how your baby sleeps.
If you do, that’s ok! However, you certainly do not need to continue sleep training your baby if you are not ready to do so.
Remember, you aren’t doing anything wrong in continuing to nurse your baby to sleep. Maybe you’ll decide to wait another month or two, and that’s ok too.
Once your baby has learned how to fall asleep without nursing and instead falls asleep with your new way of providing comfort for sleep, then you are ready to repeat the same process for the first-night waking.
And you’ll continue to the next night, waking after that, once your baby has learned to fall asleep with your new comfort measure.
At one point, your baby will adjust to the new comfort measures and fall asleep easily with it.
If you want to be able to place your baby down drowsy, then you’ll want to do the next and final step.
5) Place baby down drowsy.
Once your baby has learned to fall asleep with the new comfort measure you used to create a new sleep association, then you can continue sleep training your breastfed baby by placing your baby down right as your baby becomes drowsy.
One tip that works well is to leave your hand on your baby, gently but firmly, for a few seconds when you first place your baby down.
You’ll want to stay in the room during this process. Because if your baby starts to fuss after being put down, you will pick up your baby, repeat the comfort measure until drowsy and then place back down again.
You’ll need to be willing to repeat this process as often as necessary for your baby to realize that it can fall asleep drowsy and find comfort in doing so.
Eventually, your baby will not only fall asleep drowsy, but the time that you spend getting your baby to sleep will reduce more and more as long as you are continuing calmly and consistently.
With the process I just went through with you step-by-step, you’re going to take your time by first recognizing if this is a change you’d like to make in how you and your baby are sleeping.
Then you’ll be mindful to practice gentle parenting sleep training slowly and consistently as well as staying attuned to how you’re feeling in the process.
Let me know how it goes. Also, feel free to post to this post with any questions.
