Nursing to sleep?? LO is not sleeping very well & at her 12-month checkup yesterday my pede rec'd I stop nursing her to…

Thanks for the support, lady!! ?

My son has a humidifier (only while sick) right by his crib and that doesn't bother him. I think the biggest things that were keeping him from easily moving through sleep cycles were a nightlight & lullabies (we just do white noise now if it's going to be loud in the house). And like the other people said, sometimes doctors don't have all the answers. I definitely feel like waiting until my child was one to sleep train him was right for us. I feel like his mind was ready and separation anxiety subsided a bit. Your baby might not be ready, she will easily sleep through the night with some gentle help from you when she is ready.

Thank you so much for your reply!! I really appreciate you sharing the steps you took. I've started doing some similar stuff, like even accepting that she may cry a little in my arms when she's completely done nursing. It's tough, though! Glad to know I'm not the only one struggling with this.

And that last point about no night light is fascinating!! I sometimes wonder if it's all too much. We currently use a night light, white noise machine, essential oil diffuser, and warm-air humidifier (which sometimes makes noise that I suspect disturbs her).

Oh, I should also mention, our baby sleeps 100xs better if it is pitch dark. He slept especially better when we coslept with him in the pitch dark. We always thought he needed projectors and sound machines and night light blah blah but no.. That stuff just keeps him up!!

Hi, I was in the same boat about a month ago. This is what we did and sleep is definitely not one size fits all, but it's worth a shot!

First, we night weaned! Very important for us in the process. My husband began cosleeping with our son instead of me. At first, he cried and was upset of course. But he reassured him and rocked him etc. (I would feed him once a night around 5)

Second, we worked on him putting himself to sleep in our arms during naps and before daddy came in to sleep with him. I fed him in his room in his rocking chair but I sang loudly and played with him while he ate so he wouldn't fall asleep. Then when he was done, I held him, but didn't rock(he was upset but eventually got over it) and put him in his crib when he was out. This is very very crucially step because it helps them learn to self soothe while still feeling secure since your holding them.

Next, after 2 weeks of daddy cosleeping and eating once a night, we all slept together again. When he woke up at night, we ignored him (we had our bed on the floor for this) and after a few mins of crawling on our faces, he realized we weren't waking and went back to sleep.

After a few days of that, we put him down in his crib one night, and he slept through the whole night without a peep. If he does wake up, we go on our two way baby monitor and go shhh shhh and he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

This might be confusing if you have any questions let me know lol

and pp thank you for your comment, too! Makes me feel better. I try so hard not to let the things "experts" like pedes say get in my head but sometimes I falter...

Thanks for the support, ladies! @sondranicole, hope things improve for you! And @kaymar thanks for the comment, but we're past the age/size of swaddling, unfortch.

Katie- we've definitely had those nights!! We're all about gentle nighttime parenting but omg I've definitely had my private bathroom breakdowns over the past year. Thanks for sharing your story, makes me feel a lot better!

We still mostly nurse to sleep at 4.5. DD sttn between DH & I.

I don't take sleep development or breastfeeding advice from pedis... they simply aren't trained in it.

I had to nurse #2 to sleep until he was almost 2. We did a very modified CIO because we noticed if he cried for literally 2 minutes, he would fall asleep. This was after nights of "omg, please go to sleeeeeep!" It was more of an "omg, I've been nursing and rocking you for an hour and you were asleep until the second you hit the sheets, omg I can't!" And he was out...

I'm just poking around this group to see what it's about I have no idea how you feel about swaddling or pacifiers but we would swaddle our daughter and give her a pacifier then lay her down awake. It didn't always work at first but as time went by it came more and more normal to calmly put herself to sleep like this and eventually without the swaddle. Right now we are working on seeing if she can do so happily without the pacifier.

No advice in 18 months in and in the sand boat.