Comments on: Monday Musings: Do You Nurse Your Baby To Sleep?

By: When Not Breastfeeding Breaks Your Heart A Little | Breastfeeding Moms Unite

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:49:20 +0000

[...] Not Breastfeeding Breaks Your Heart A Little I’ve recently started working towards not nursing my youngest daughter to sleep. She’s two and a half and I’m at the point where I’d like to be able to go [...]

By: melanie

melanie — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:32:15 +0000

Hi I’m a first time mummy and I read this blog with interest my little one is 8 months and I nurse him to sleep. But since he was about 5 months he wants to nurse every hour all night. And sometimes if he is comfort nursing and he doesn’t want the milk he can be awake for 2 hours before falling asleep again. I worry because he doesn’t sleep enough.

I have tried pantleys techniques from 5 months but it seemed to make things worse. Because when I whispered the trigger words it would wake him up. And I had always done a night time routine. His longest sleep used to be 4 hours now that’s a rare occurrence. Usually its 1 to 2 hours. My health visitor wants me to make him sleep through the night.but I don’t want him to cry it out. Don’t know what to do I work 4 days a week and I am a single parent as my husband left any help appreciated please….. we co sleep already but some nights he is on the breast every 10th minutes on off on off just keeps us both awake .thanks in advance for any help

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:59:20 +0000

Hi! My name is Melissa, and I’m from W. Canada. I JUST found your blog and am reading backwards in it because I love it SOOO much. Thank you!!! I wanted to introduce myself as a new follower, and I felt compelled to respond to this post despite the fact that you wrote it in July!! I hope you get your comments emailed to you, otherwise you might not get this! I just wanted to add my story to the pile;
I have 3 sons. ds #1, similar story to yours; nursed to sleep ONLY, took over an HOUR, woke if I left, drove me CRAZY! I love breastfeeding, but that nighttime slog left me resentful. Eventually, he grew out of it, but it was extremely frustrating for me at the time. Especially as he was my first, so I knew my hubby was enjoying over an hour of leisure time downstairs while I slogged, and I was afraid it would never end!
ds #2 couldn’t sleep if we were in the room, but would cry if we left…it confounded us, until we tried the Ferber Method and found that if we left, let him cry for 5 to 10 seconds, and opened the door to reassure him, he would then promptly fall asleep. We also had a CD of classical instruments playing lullabies that played softly in his room while he fell asleep. I am not an advocate for babies crying while sleeping but darn it if a little 10 seconds of crying was what worked for him! They’ll always confound your hard and fast beliefs!!
ds #3 is 13 months now, and I knew when he was born that with 3 kids I couldn’t afford the hour to breastfeed him to sleep that I had given ds #1, so I tried to keep bfing separate from sleeping. I fed him when he woke, and put him to sleep when he indicated he was tired with that same classical lullabies CD and some back patting. This worked for 5 months, until he developed bronchitis (poor baby) and then of course I nursed him round the clock. After that he resisted going back to the back patting, and I didn’t want to fight it, so since then I’ve nursed him to sleep. But I wait until I’m CERTAIN he is pretty tired if my hubby isn’t home, so it will take 10 minutes or less. If my hubby is home, I will take longer but I don’t resent it as much because hubby has his hands full putting the older 2 to bed! It’s actually kind of nice to ‘get out of’ the chaos and retreat to our bed to nurse the baby!
I think ds#3 is much more easygoing than ds #1, but needs more touch and milk than ds #2. They really do all have different sleep personalities!
Lately sometimes I will breastfeed #3 and he will finish, pop off, and want to PLAY! If my hubby is working (he does shift work, so some nights), I immediately get up and wait 1/2 hour or 40 minutes until he is more tired, and try again. If hubby is home, we switch. Magically, it takes him less time, which seems common amongst the women who commented above!

I definitely need some kid free downtime after they go to bed adn before I go to bed. I can function pretty well with less sleep, so I’ve been known to stay up too late just to get that hour or so without kids, and then just be tired the next day. I’m tired all the time anyways, what’s a little more? It drains me MORE to have no time to myself (introvert) than it does to have less sleep than I need.

Hang in there! This, too, shall pass, as several women have commented!
And it’s so nice to have found your blog. I’m seriously here every day, reading back, or looking for new posts. I need this site!! I have very few friends who breastfeed longer than their year maternity leave, and those who do seem to all be long distance friends, so it can be lonely being the only extended breastfeeder around! Thanks so much!!

p.s. my mom’s an LC and I forwarded her your post about Lansinoh and WHO violations. Thanks for making us aware! We thought the same as you–bfing product, must be bf friendly!!

By: JTW

JTW — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:03:38 +0000

SO nice to read so many others are in and/or have survived this phase. My son is 7 months old and he nurses to sleep every night. I never intended to start this habbit…it just ended up this way. I work during the day 5 days a week so late-afternoon/nighttime is the only time ds and I get to spend one-on-one time together. My husband is a stay-at-home dad. When I’m at work, ds will fall asleep for a nap either on a walk in his stroller, or on a bottle (but only when he’s exhausted!). Some days he barely naps at all. When I’m home with him on the weekends, he’ll nurse to sleep and take great naps. At night, he’ll nurse for an hour before he falls asleep…then, once he’s in a DEEP sleep, I will gently transfer him to his crib (right by my bed). I’m not too worried about nursing him to sleep at his age, but I do worry a LOT about him needing to nurse to get to sleep forever…(ok, not really “forever”, but you get what I’m saying).

He was a great baby and started sleeping through the night really early…but, now that he’s teething, he’s started waking up again in the middle of the night to nurse. I don’t mind doing it, except that it’s hard to get up to go to work being so tired. I don’t think that he even needs to nurse to go back to sleep…but, when he wakes up in his crib and catches a glimpse of me, he starts to fuss and will only be comforted nursing. If I’m not in the room, occasionally he’ll go back to sleep on his own. I know this could be solved by putting him in his own room…but it makes me nervous to have him in the other room alone (paranoid), so I just deal with it.

It’s nice to know that others have been down this road nursing older babies to sleep and they were, eventually, able to transition out of it semi-easily. Thanks to all who posted!…you made me feel better!!

By: Lilac_Trees

Lilac_Trees — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:18:48 +0000

Audiobooks on my MP3 player are the only things that save my sanity! Otherwise, I’m not able to relax enough for ds to relax and go to sleep.

I was able to transition my ds to his own bed and room at 12mo. I was nursing him to sleep then leaving to get into my own bed. After the first couple of nights, he stoped waking up to nurse and was sleeping all night in his bed.

Then, at 18mo I got pregnant and ds developed and EXTREME case of separation anxiety. I had some complications, but when I got pregnant again four months later, ds was still nursing and sleeping in my bed. I was able to gradually wean him as my milk supply went down, and he’s been completely weaned for the last 7 months, but I didn’t transition him back into his own bed first.

Now with the new baby here it’s really hard to cuddle ds1 while bf the baby. Unfortunately between adjusting to the new baby and teething and being 2-yrs old I can’t start the transition for a while yet

It’s really nice to know I’m not the only one feeling “trapped” by my night-time parenting methods. I do agree that pushing too hard about their own bed is like toilet training and that forcing it too soon won’t work.

So I’m stuck too.

And stressing about what to do with baby number 2. He falls asleep nursing too. I can still put him down after he’s asleep (which I could never do with my first). But am I starting out on the same road all over again?

By: Jennifer L.

Jennifer L. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:07:59 +0000

Wow, there’s another mommy out there in the same boat! I too have some envy of those parents who put their toddlers to bed at 7:00, after a brief bedtime routine, with some calm lullaby music, and the child lays down and falls asleep peacefully. Yes, I often feel like I’ve brought this whole night nursing “habit” upon myself and now this “habit” is something that is going to drive us all nuts. My daughter goes down absurdly easily for naps (nurse, nurse, zonk), but at night it’s a process. She nearly falls asleep and then she bounces up like a weeble-wobble wanting more stories and refusing her milkies. Oh it makes me crazy, especially when the night nursing gets dragged out over an hour.

I just read some more reassuring articles this evening suggesting that we’re not alone and that this isn’t entirely abnormal behavior. Toddlerhood is fleeting and our wee ones will be big all too soon. Someday we will have our evenings back!

It’s 9:00 and my wee one is out and I am still functioning so I might snuggle up with some popcorn and a fiction novel…

Happy thoughts to you!

By: Whozat

Whozat — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:01:39 +0000

Other than occassionally conking out on the car, my 8.5 month old always nurses to sleep.

(And if I’m riding in the backseat w/her, she’s likely to nurse to sleep in the car, too. Mama’s getting pretty good at the hang-over-the-carseat method )

Theoretically, it would be nice for my partner to be able to get her down, but in reality, I’m the one with her all day, and we all go to bed together at night, and it’s damn effective.

It might be more of an issue as she gets older, but for now, my theory is that if we were not meant to nurse our babies to sleep, and then sleep with them, breastfeeding would not put baby and Mama to sleep!

Whozat’s last blog post..The Latest in Ergonomic Home Office Seating