Flexible breastfeeds help make toddler sleep easy

It's normal for toddlers to fall asleep with a breastfeed

Toddlers often still fall asleep with a breastfeed. This is biologically normal, and helps make sleep easy.

Breastfeeding doesn't only bring your little one the extraordinary nutritional and myriad other bioactive protections which are offered up with the living tissue of your milk. Breastfeeding remains a form of sensory motor nourishment. From an evolutionary perspective, breastfeeding continues to address both these biological needs, even for toddlers. It usually doesn't help to think about these two roles of breastfeeding as if they are separate.

Toddlers like to fall asleep with breastfeeds because breastfeeding causes

• A rise in the neurohormones of relaxation due to physical closeness and loving interaction

• Dialling up of the parasympathetic nervous system, the ‘rest and digest’ part of the involuntary nervous system, activated by milk in the tummy (though not all toddler breastfeeds transfer much milk)

• Dialling down of the sympathetic nervous system activated by the soothing sensory motor experience of suckling.

For as long as you are choosing to breastfeed, from a biological perspective breastfeeding remains an important part of your child's sleep ecosystem. You can find out why breastfeeding your toddler to sleep doesn't cause bad habits here.

What are flexible toddler breastfeeds?

If you are a breastfeeding woman, offering your toddler the breast when you think her sleep pressure is high helpsdials her down. Your breast continues to be a powerful tool for keeping sleep as easy as possible, especially at night. This has a wonderful side benefit: the sleep regulators (both the body clock and sleep pressure) kick in easily in a dialled down toddler.

Offering breastfeeds can be so helpful for families with a breastfeeding toddler that it remains a #1 toddler-sleep superpower.

Your little one's sleep needs decreased throughout the first year of her life. Now, your toddler will only drop off to sleep at the breast when the sleep pressure is very high, which happens less and less often during the day as she grows older and naps disappear. But many women breastfeed their small child off to sleep right throughout toddlerhood. They find it easiest. When they are ready to stop – they wean.

Breastfeeds don't need to last long

Toddler breastfeeds can be surprisingly quick, a brief and powerful fix of sensory motor nourishment, up close and connected to your body. But there'll be times when you're happy to settle down into a relaxed long breastfeeding cuddle together. The main thing is to know you can use the breast to dial your toddler down, whenever you want to. You might also offer the breast again even though you offered just a short time ago! And if you don't want to offer the breast at any particular moment, that's fine too and may be increasingly the case. Shift your toddler's focus onto a richer sensory motor adventure, most easily achieved by being outside the house!

Recommended resources

Flexible breastfeeds help make toddler sleep easy

Breastfeeding your toddler to sleep doesn't cause bad habits

How to support a breastfeeding woman so that toddler sleep isn't entirely up to her?

Would it help your toddler's sleep to delay or space out breastfeeding in the night?

Would weaning or increasing the amount of solids your toddler eats help with sleep?

What to do about toddler sleep when you're ready to wean from the breast?

What to do about daytime sleeps when you're weaning your toddler?

Would night weaning help your toddler sleep better?

Selected references

Veile A, Miller V. Duration of breast feeding in ancestral environments. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_818: Springer, Cham.; 2021.

Sellen DW, Smay DB. Relationship between subsistence and age at weaning in "preindustrial" societies. Human Nature. 2001;12:47-87.