My son is 5 months old today! He STTN, but I nurse him to sleep. When should I start thinking about breaking that habit? What are some good approaches?
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We stopped when it no longer worked for us (i.e. he would wake on the transfer to the crib). Do you want to stop because you WANT to stop? Or do you feel like you "should" stop?
We used Ferber's method of CIO with checks at 6.5 months and it went well. There are a lot of different methods though, I would search some old threads.
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@hilsy85: I'm just trying to develop a long term game plan. Eventually I would like my husband to be able to put him to sleep, but it's ok if this drags out for awhile.
At some point I will have to stop skipping ALL of my office social events, etc. I would like to be able to take the occasional evening off.
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So I'm the worst person to ask this because we nursed to sleep forever. But from reading the site I do know for some babies it's possible to continue nursing to sleep, if you want, and still have others put baby to bed.
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There is the "if it's not broke, don't fix it" school of thought and then there's the establish good habits now, which will help you down the line, thought. I tend to favour the latter and used the Troublesome Tots website as a good reference point when LO was younger. It says that by 6 months you should be looking to be able to put your LO down awake without nursing, rocking etc. This page has some good tips about trying drowsy but awake and so on: http://www.troublesometots.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-sleeping-through-the-night-part-2/
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I never tried to stop. LO is almost 18 months and we still nurse last thing but as she gets older she doesn't fall asleep anymore. Now we read, nurse, brush teeth, say good night and give kisses to everyone and I put her to bed awake. She's asleep in 2 minutes. I think if it's still working for everyone, why stop?
ETA: it was gradual for us - maybe starting at 8 months she'd be more drowsy than asleep when I put her down. As she got less drowsy after nursing we switched the teeth brushing to after nursing. Now she's totally awake when I put her to bed.
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At 4 months, after LO nursed to sleep, I woke him up and put him in his crib awake. He went right to sleep with no crying, I was shocked! I kept waking him up, and eventually he stopped falling asleep. In retrospect, though, I would have waited until it was a problem. Will your LO fall asleep taking a bottle? My LO does, and that could be a solution to missing bedtime occasionally.
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My LO is 8 months and we nurse to sleep about half the time (maybe a little less now, but it's been gradually declining over the past few months). Other nights, she goes into the crib still awake and she occasionally gets a bedtime bottle if I'm out of the house for whatever reason. I'm blessed with a fairly flexible baby (for the time being, at least, since I'm sure she's going to flip the script at some point!) but I'm really glad we have a variety of options that all seem to work okay.
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Maybe have your husband try putting him to bed with a bottle one night? My LO (10 mo) rarely nurses to sleep anymore, and I miss it. Bedtime was so much easier when she did!
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We never really stopped until we weaned at just past 1 year. DS did fine napping without nursing...and some nights he'd be asleep, sometimes he'd wake up during the transfer and then resettle himself back in the crib. I wasn't super concerned about stopping since I knew that he could fall asleep without it.
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We stopped nursing to sleep not long ago so sometime between 11 and 12 months. It just happened one day!
However, if we're out and about and DS won't nap and I don't have a bottle with me when he's showing signs of being overly tired, I'll nurse him to sleep. I'm pretty dried up now, but it's the calm he needs to focus, settle down and drift off to sleep.
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She nursed to sleep until 11 months and then used a bottle to fall asleep from 11 months until almost 19 months. I let it go on way too long in retrospect. It was bad for her teeth (though I haven't taken her to the dentist yet, so I don't know if it affected anything) and supposedly going beyond 15 months makes it a lot harder to stop. I finally got her off the bedtime bottle/bottles all together a few weeks ago. It was a rough 1-2 weeks, but she is fine without it now. That said, we've had a lot of craziness going on in our household due to my husband's health issues, so we sort of did what we needed to do to maintain my sanity... I don't really have regrets or feel we did any lasting harm (as long as her teeth are ok!).
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I would keep nursing to sleep for as long as it works well for you. If you really want to wean off of it, the No Cry Sleep Solution has some ideas.
We nursed to sleep until LO hit a wicked sleep regression at 4months. Then we did CIO using Sleep Easy Soultion. Worked like a charm.
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pretty sure i asked the identical question a few months ago. i thought about stopping, but then realized i was essentially eliminating my single greatest weapon for getting her to sleep! on the nights i'm not there, she goes to sleep just fine, and occasionally DH will be home early and decide to just put her down himself, so i decided not to worry about it. i don't nurse for naps since i'm not there.
these days, she generally doesn't fall asleep nursing, she just relaxes and gets really sleepy. then she eventually pulls off and squirms like she wants to be put down - i put her in her crib and she's out in a few minutes. she started doing that on her own a few months ago. I just follow her cues.
also, i love nursing to sleep!!
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We never stopped. We enjoy it, and it works, so why quit? She's 16 months now.
DH can put her to sleep without me by wearing her and going for a walk.
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We stopped when it stopped working. I still usually do for naps.
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I still nurse my nearly 17mo to sleep. It's my favorite part of the day. He's in a floor bed, so I lay with him and snuggle him, I stroke his soft baby hair and watch him drift off to sleep.
I get a lot of flak for it and I considered stopping but it works for us.
Don't stop if you truly don't want to! There are no rules against it.
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16 comments