how did you stop nursing to sleep?

[becknnico]

My baby is 7 months old and still needs to nurse to sleep. For naps too unless walking in the sling. I was fine with it at first, but I feel like we should break this habit and cant think of a way that is not going to be a huge pain in the ass. What did you do to break this habit? Gracefully or not, I guess.

I am just out of the habit with 10 month old.

First I helped him fall asleep on me.

Now he has just learnt to fall asleep on his back, which is pretty amazing when I think about how often he needed to bf to fall back to sleep through the night.

It took a bit of crying and a lot of shhhing and patting.

Watching with interest as my 8mo has always fed to sleep apart from in the sling, although now his teeth have started cutting through he's starting to wean himself off it - which is great because in 5 months time I'll be going back to work a couple of days so he won't obviously be able to feed to sleep then (his gran won't be able to supply!)

Trouble is, he won't self-settle, doesn't take a dummy or suck his thumb, and I'm REALLY struggling to get him off to sleep - I usually have to wait until he's absolutely shattered before he'll eventually drop off on the boob. This obviously means his sleep quality is rubbish and he wakes up pretty soon again anyway. I'm keen to read the replies to your post Beck... as we urgently need some help here too!

My ds just got his first two teeth this week too!! That is also a concern too- no one else being able to put him down. God forbid I may want a night out after 40 weeks pg and 7 months sober!

at 5 months we used pick up/put down from baby whisperer, and DH took over bed time which makes it MUCH easier... I still BF to sleep for some of her naps, but has made a huge difference to her night sleep, she either sleeps through or wakes once, prior to this could wake 4-5 times...

I started off by not feeding him to sleep at nap times.

From memory, when it was coming up to nap time I would feed him downstairs (rather than in his dark nursery), then when it was nap time I would take him upstairs and do everything I would normaly do to get him to sleep - except breastfeeding, ie rocking and singing.

Once I stopped feeding him to sleep at nap times, I then made sure that dh took him up for his naps at the weekend so ds learnt that it wasn't just me who took him to bed.

It was actually quite painless, and I always fed him to sleep in the evening. But I think that was because I didn't want to stop that one

Scarlett-I have read hoggs book too, and seems like a gentle remedy. However, seems like I am always so tired to test it out. I am a single mom and when he is ready for bed, so am I. I know if I want it to change, I need to try it out already. When you began doing this, was he up for a long time before settling? I feel like if I tried this, he would just cry and cry, and would wake up even more??

I stopped the bedtime feed-to-sleep with my DD at about 7.5 months. I tried PU/PD, ssh/pat and holding/rocking etc., but it all made her more hysterical because I wasn't offering the boob. In the end I kissed her and left her to protest - anger and frustration rather than melt-down crying. I was ready to go back in the instant she sounded as if she was getting really upset, but the protesting remained intermittent and the first night she fell asleep within 25 mins.

The first couple of wake ups that night I did the same - was in the room by then, but stayed quiet (if she heard me, she would redouble her protesting) and each time she calmed down fairly quickly and fell back to sleep. By the third time, she just fidgeted a bit before self-settling. I eventually gave her a feed in the early morning.

The next night she fell asleep within 20mins at bedtime and there were fewer overnight protests.

Night three, she went to sleep quickly and without a murmur.

She's been much better ever since and her overnight wake-ups has gone from 5 minimum to 1-3 and she does longer sleep stretches at a time. I feed her when she wakes at night, but usually put her back down awake and she can mostly self-settle (gets trickier in the early morning, for some reason)

It wasn't fun at the time, but it's been miles better for both her sleep and mine. And we got through the pain barrier a lot faster than I would have expected.

Damned if I can make it work for naps, though!!! They're another ball-game completely.