Help me break nursing to sleep habit before maternity leave finishes

[NapTrapped]

To all of you wise ladies of mn, please give me your advice!

Visiting a nursery this afternoon and it's triggered all sorts of anxiety. Sleep has been an issue since we left the hospital so we've ended up co-sleeping (following safe sleep guidelines). Daytime naps have always been contact naps, eyes just glare open wide as soon as LO is put down either asleep or drowsy. LO is always nursed or bounced to sleep and I'm hoping we have plenty of time (4 months) to gently break these habits so it's not a massive shock.

Please no judgments, we're just doing what works right now. If you have been in a similar situation and a certain method worked well for your family, please share! Thank you in advance.

Sorry no advice from me but I’m watching this thread with interest as I’m in exactly the same position.

My son is 9 months and still gets fed to sleep. I go back to work in 5 weeks and had said I wanted him sleeping on his own and being able to self settle by that time. I really don't think that's going to happen. He's already started going to nursery for a couple of hours in the morning and will sleep there but if I'm around he just wants me to feed him to sleep.
Hoping someone can give some tips that we can try to get him sleeping a bit better.

He does sleep on his own at home for naps though rather than being held. I lie him down on the bed and I lie next to him and feed him to sleep, once he's asleep I just stand up and leave him to sleep on his own and then I have half an hour to myself to try and get all my jobs done.

I have a 15 month old DS and I went back to work, full time but condensed into 4 days just before he was a year and had exactly the same issue.

I tried to wean and it just didn’t work for me but I am still feeding in the morning and night and he drinks water and eats at nursery (he won’t take a bottle or milk from a cup) but it’s worked fine and he feeds a little more the days that I am off.

We did pick up put down with 6 month old DD last week, it took 3 nights of crying for 20mins ish at bedtime (which in all honesty I found very difficult at the time but she was always being held while she cried, we never left her upset). Now she can self settle at bedtime and for naps, and naps in the cot during the day for 1-2 hours which was unthinkable before - all our naps had been pram/sling/contact.

During the day I’m feeding when she wakes up from a nap rather than just before and at night she has her last feed downstairs with the lights on etc before the bedtime routine starts upstairs, I think that’s helped break the feed to sleep association. I was happy feeding or rocking to sleep while it worked but as she got older it got more and more difficult to put her down without waking up, we had a week or so over Christmas where she couldn’t be put down at all overnight so OH and I had to tag team holding her through the night which we weren’t prepared to carry on doing.

Night time sleep is still tricky with multiple wake ups, I don’t have the willpower to carry on with pick up put down through the night and we end up co sleeping from 4am but hopefully the self settling will help long term 🤞🏻

Hi
My baby is 9.5 months and I go back to work in 2 weeks
I started by breastfeeding in between meals, then with meals and then miraculously one day he went hours without milk at mealtimes so I stuck with it and now I feed him at 7am and 6pm oh and during the night!! But in the day he just has food and water.
Literally this wasn’t the case a few weeks ago and I was in a panic even thinking about introducing formula and a bottle but a health worker said just try to get him off during the day and it has worked....hope that helps?

Thank you all for your advice! We settled on trying Pick Up Put Down but LO wouldn't settle at all each time she was picked up. I felt that the constant up and down was only making things worse. I had read somewhere if your LO is easily stimulated, your presence may make things worse and another method where your presence isn't so close by may be more suitable.

I can't believe it as I thought I would never do it but we tried Ferber. We're literally only two naps in but may be worth the update if anyone is interested. LO fell asleep in her crib after 30 minutes the first time and 11 minutes the second time. This is completely new territory and hoping this continues until there's sleep without any cries or fussing.

The crying is heartbreaking but I feel we need to give this method our best for a few days and see how she gets on.

I'll probably end up posting again in less than 24 hours saying we've given up!

Hi OP. Good luck with the sleep training! It's much kinder than leaving it to the nursery to sort out, which many seem to do. If it helps, I took to reading to DD before feeding her to sleep, then over time just made the feed shorter and did feed first then the book, then ultimately just the book. It worked fairly smoothly although there were still some tears when I first stopped the feeding to sleep. But I think it's very hard to change this sort of habit at a time you choose (as opposed to when they grow out of it) without a few tears.