When did nursing to sleep and co-sleeping get easier for your baby?

[Newmummy2026]

Nearly 8 month old baby, first time mum. Struggling with nurse to sleep association and want to know if things naturally improve and when? 😥
nursed to sleep since birth, have introduced bottles early so she occasionally takes these but more recently due to teething has refused them. (No teeth have cut as of yet!) I managed to get her to have a bottle before bed last night and she fell asleep on this rather than needing the usual ‘top up’ of breast, so I felt positive about this that she can sleep without being on the boob.

We co sleep, not through choice more because she will wake every hour it seems if she is in her cot beside us. I only get longer stretches when I put her in our bed. Me and my husband both suffer when she’s in our bed, our backs are breaking from giving her space. I’m not sure how to transition her out of this. I’ve tried alternative soothing methods and unlatching her whilst awake, but she just screams and gets worse unless I give boob!

My husband works full time and i don’t expect his help in the night wakings. We agreed on that early on, He can’t do much anyway since she is breastfed. Im always conscious of letting her cry or moan at night in case she wakes him every hour. How can I get her independently sleeping and connecting cycles herself because I am in dire need of more sleep and think this might take a long time to adjust her. Any similar experiences or advice welcome!!

Hi OP, I literally could have written this word for word about a year ago! We now have a 21 month old who doesn't BF and sleeps through, but it did take time to get there.

Everyone told me to sleep train but my daughter just couldn't handle the crying, she would cry and build up to throwing up. It just didn't suit her personality. We tried it for one night and never did it again. Instead, we very slowly tackled the two issues separately. We worked on the co-sleeping first, as my back was wrecked.

We just took it in turns to put her back in her cot every time she woke up. It was hard at first and we had a few sleepless nights but we never left her to cry and would transfer her once she had fallen asleep on us. It started off by taking ages to rock her to sleep, then putting her down. Then it became quicker over time. I also did her naps in the cot or in the pram to help her associate these spaces with sleep.

In terms of the feeding, this one was much harder!! I breastfed until 15 months and by about 13 months I started to break the habit of feeding to sleep. She was naturally knackered after starting nursery so I would rock her to sleep. There were a few times where she got ill and we reverted back to feeding to sleep for her benefit/calories. The main thing that helped was having my husband do the overnight wakes. As soon as she clocked that milk wasn't available, she did start to settle more.

And then she chose to finish BF herself at 15 months. I didn't force her off it, she just started losing interest and snuggled on me instead.

Now we have a wonderfully calm, snuggly daughter and I'm very pleased with how my husband and I handled it!

Some of the wakes are hunger at this age, especially if breastfed. How is weaning going? Do you give an evening meal yet, does baby eat much of it? Can you make it more calorific/filling, eg butter in mashed potato, avocado with green veg, peanut butter in porridge?

Thanks for sharing. Yeah we tried sleep training for two nights and it was horrific. My husband and I couldn’t do it. I even tried soothing her every time I put her in the cot but she still ended up with us in bed when we were both just exhausted. Unfortunately, I just don’t think my husband can handle night waking with her. He doesn’t have the patience to withstand her cries even for the ‘one bad night’. He’ll default to ‘just breastfeed her’ or ‘just bring her in our bed’ and it frustrates me because I know it has to get worse before it’s better. His work is very demanding during the day so it isn’t helpful for either of us if he hasn’t slept as he needs to be on top form for work, whereas I don't work. This is my dilemma because she will always smell breast milk if I’m the only one doing this with her, so I know it isn’t going to be easy.

She sleeps in the pram more often now her naps are not in her bed space so maybe I need to start there. We have a bedtime routine which i keep consistent. She just wakes within 30mins of being put down at the start of the night and then I’m just breastfeeding her back off to sleep. She wakes again 30-40mins later sometimes sooner. And it’s like this for hours. By midnight I’m exhausted and she sleeps in the bed next to me for a solid 1-2 hrs then which at least gives me some rest.

We have started weaning but it’s slow. She isn’t interested much, she likes yoghurt and rice and potato occasionally. It’s a struggle with porridge, eggs or anything else tbh. She just turns her head, becomes irritable and just refuses. I’m trying to keep at this though offering something every day at least one or two meals but even if she is in the mood for it, she usually only has one or two baby spoons then that’s it.

I could’ve written this myself about a year ago! My DD was waking hourly and wanting to feed back to sleep every time, and I ended up co-sleeping because it was the only way I could get any sleep at all 😭

For us, we first had to work on breaking the feed-to-sleep association, and then later on helping her learn to fall asleep and stay asleep without feeding. We actually did this quite a bit later though, at around 14–15 months.

We tried sleep training at around 7 months, but DD really didn’t take to it. Like some PPs have mentioned, she was quite refluxy and actually ended up being sick after crying too much, so we stopped and left it for a while.

By 14 months though, we were completely exhausted and felt we had to try something again. To start breaking the feed-to-sleep association, I would unlatch her when she was very drowsy but not completely asleep. There was a LOT of protesting at first and it definitely didn’t work every time! I’d then rock her, shush/pat her etc. to get her the rest of the way to sleep. Even that was really difficult initially 😭 Once she was deeply asleep, I’d transfer her into the cot (usually after 20mins or so). We tried to do the same for naps and bedtime, although naps were definitely harder. Blackout curtains and white noise helped us too.

Then at around 14–15 months we tried sleep training again. Eventually we did have to go a bit cold turkey because check-ins or other interventions actually seemed to make her more upset. We absolutely hated hearing her cry, especially because we were worried about her being sick again 😥, but we kept a close eye on her. The first couple of nights were by far the worst, but after that she adjusted surprisingly quickly. She went from waking constantly, to 2–3 times a night, and then not long afterwards she started sleeping through.

She’s 2.5 now and we’ve actually had another little wobble after moving house! I’ve been staying in her room for the last couple of weeks, but I’m gradually trying to reduce how much help she needs — going from cuddling her, to just putting a hand on her, then hopefully sitting beside her and eventually leaving the room 🤞😅

Anyway, I just wanted to say that it won’t necessarily be like this forever. I remember being so sleep deprived and wondering whether it would ever end, but for us it did eventually get so much better. Hang in there x

20 months, he just decided to sleep through the night, 10.5 hours, in his crib. Did nothing differently. Still breastfeeding to sleep now, he's age 2 and a bit.

However, he had done a week or 2 of stretches of sleeps regularly since he was 11 months so I knew he would eventually do it. But he was constantly getting new molars or illnesses and he was very, very sensitive to them. So every new tooth/bug was weeks of disturbance. He's still a bit like that but he has all his teeth now (he was very early with all his molars) and the bugs have been less bad.

Neither of my children improved spontaneously unfortunately. We started by added other sleep associations before taking feeding to sleep away. For us white noise and bum patting, then gradually unlatching earlier in the getting to sleep process. For DS we used a floor bed for a bit so he could fall asleep next to me and I could roll away. He continued to wake at night but at least DH could pat him to sleep! He carried on waking frequently even when we got him self settling but improved a lot suddenly when his mobility improved.My DD we gradually did less and less til she was genuinely self settling (bath, teeth, story, cuddle, song, night night) and she woke far less frequently as soon as we got to that point. Both continued to wake once a night sometimes with some sleep throughs until 3 and have been much more reliable since then. Once you get to one or two wakes a night, it is manageable.