cuddling to sleep - advice on when/how to stop

[poppy34]

dd 8 months - is generally pretty regular on naps and ok at sleeping at night. trouble is that her routine is based around needing a cuddle to get to sleep (or bottle of milk and then cuddle if she isn't asleep at night). Given we can usually put her into her cot and with everything else (like weaning !) going on I"ve let it slide ... however I'm concerned as I'm back to work shortly that I should train her out of this. We have had some success leaving her to fall asleep in her cot when we're next door but not lately.

She will sleep in her pushchair, car seat etc if it is sleep time so its not exclusive her association with sleep is with cuddling.

Should I do something about this or let her grow out of it? if so what - I'm not madly keen on the idea of cc.

dd (now 10 months) was always fed and cuddled to sleep too. as she got bigger she gradually stopped falling asleep during the feed and we started to put her down in the cot awake. we have a little wind up teddy that plays a lullabye. she tends to make one short cry as we go out the room but stops immediately and usually falls asleep.

if for any reason she doesn't stop crying or can't settle, we go in and give her a cuddle and try again. it was a pretty gradual thing and went completely out the window for a couple of weeks when she was 7 or 8 months when she insisted on falling asleep nose to nose with me. we just went along with this while it lasted and she grew out of it.

they are all different, but i think they will settle themselves eventually when they are ready. unfotunately, ds is 3 and still needs cuddled to sleep!!! hope your dd is one who learns quickly!

thanks raggedrobin -tbh I'm sort of hoping she will outgrow it and will try putting her down for her naps.

You should stop cuddling to sleep when you want to stop cuddling to sleep, and not before. There's nothing you can do to prepare her for your return to work, and actually disrupting a happy routine to try to prepare her is actually worse than keeping everything consistent and then letting her figure out by herself (very quickly at this age) how to mesh with her care giver when you're not there. Babies do one thing with one person and another with someone else. Now is not a fab time to try and teach her to self settle as she's about to (if not already) get into separation anxiety, where she'll have a complete melt-down if you leave the room.

fair point ches - she is into the separation anxiety phase (plus she is getting a cold) so prob not the best time to start it. TBH I can pretty much live with it but concerned re nanny but as you say she'll prob do something else entirely with her.