Pls share experience: when did your baby naturally grow out of cosleeping and/or bf to sleep

[tofumom]

Hi all! I have a 11mo that is bf to sleep and cosleeping from the start. He wakes maybe twice in the night for a quick bf and I do it lying down still half asleep myself so really I can't complain. But in the evenings he does wake more until I go to bed (I think he is waiting for me to stop watching tv and get into bed with him 😆). Although I'm fine with the arrangement now, it would be nice if one day he could sleep in his own room. Also at the minute I can't go out in the evenings which is fine but I do get FOMO sometimes. So, just after some stories and experience on what age your LOs naturally grew out of cosleeping and bf to sleep without sleep training. Thanks in advance! 🙏🏼

Not much help but my little ones 6 months and I’m currently training her out of breastfeeding to naps, its a long process.

I co sleep with her currently and she feeds 2-3 times throughout the night but I’ve started fazing her into her cot.
I’ve moved my mattress onto the floor alongside her cot mattress so that she’s still close but not near touching.

I am going to introduce formula though as I’m back to work, so hopefully that will help!

Good luck I hope your little ones sleeping on their own soon ❤️

My 13mo still feeds to sleep with me but goes to sleep easily for other people. My mum puts him in the cot and he settles himself down whilst she tidied things in the room, my husband lies with him on our bed and transfers him once asleep, nursery rock him in a cot - so they all have different ways. He has just started sleeping for long chunks at night after waking hourly for most of the first year of his life. He now sleeps from 7.30pm ish to 5am ish in his cot, then comes in with us and feeds/sleeps until 6.30 ish. We haven’t really done anything different though my husband started doing more of the wakeups around 11/12mo ish as I was very tired after a year of 7-10 wakeups a night and needed some longer chunks of sleep myself. We found that for most wakeups my husband could lie him back down and he happily went back to sleep.

Btw he would go into the cot first and then come in with me in spare room after first wake up - so he sort of still does that now but first wake up is 5am rather than 11pm!

My almost 2 year old still feeds to sleep, we don’t co sleep though.

My 20 month old still feeds to sleep and cosleeps. She goes down in her own bedroom, but will wake once or twice in the evening usually, then usually 2 times more during the night which is when I bring her into my bed.

Having said that, I've just started trying to get her to stay in her own room. I have removed her cot and just put the mattress on the floor, and then I lie on a roll out futon mattress next to her when I need to be in there. The plan is to eventually phase out cosleeping in this way, and then to send DH in for wake ups in order to night wean her.

Recently nightweaned my DD at 2.5. Due to some medical reasons the comfort was very important to her and I didn’t want to take it away from her until after her surgery. I was terrified that after so long of being fed to sleep it would be a complete disaster! It’s been amazingly smooth sailing. We read some books about it first (Sally does Nightweaning etc), and I started by not feeding her when she work as she was already nice and sleepy, so I’d just cuddle her and other than a tiny grumble when I told her mummy milk was sleeping now she went straight back off! After a week of that she was game for self-settling, so now I give her a feed with a time limit, and then lie down with her and wait for her to go to sleep. Sometimes she asks me to rock her if she’s struggking to nod off, but they she just lies back down and goes to sleep.

Honestly, I thought it would be impossible to break the habit and would involve horrific nights of screaming and crying and lots of distress for both of us. It hasn’t been like that at all.

I haven’t stopped co-sleeping yet, but that’s the next step for us. Going to give it two weeks more of not feeding her to sleep and then set up her “big bed”.

I think most toddlers are ready for it earlier that she was. But if it’s working for you now, keep it up as long as you are happy with it that way. Feeding to sleep and cosleeping doesn’t mean you’re child will NEVER learn to self-settle. It’s a perfectly natural way of doing it, and if it works for you, fine. If you find it doesn’t work for you any more, then change it. Toddlers can adapt really quite well to different routines.