Children can learn to associate feeding with sleep and find that the easiest way to settle and resettle. A step you could take towards weakening this association is to move the feed earlier in the bedtime routine (for example, before the change into PJs rather than after it). You could also remove unnecessary feeds from the nap routines, if those feeds are no longer needed for sustenance.
Please add your experiences with this approach in the comments below. Please provide the age of your child when you tried it, and how long you tried it for. If it helped, please share the effects you saw. If it didn’t help, why do you think it didn’t work in your case?
“The main change I made to her bed time was to move her before bed breastfeed to before I get her ready for bed. Funnily enough we went through a really bad patch when she was 4 months, and this was what worked then as well (we went from having to hold and feed her all night to her waking up once after midnight, having a feed and going back to sleep until at least 5.30am). I had got out of the habit as when she moved to two naps she was so tired by evening that she would fall asleep feeding no matter what I did – so I had to feed when she was ready for bed. Of course, she then stopped being that tired but I failed to move it back.” (Mother of 13 month old girl tried this and found it did help)