Natural Birth and Baby Care.com

How to Get 6mo Old Baby to Stop Nursing to Sleep?

by Brooke Shergold
(Vancouver, BC, Canada)

I am at my wits end. I bought Baby Sleep Solutions like you suggested, but I still cannot seem to get my 6mo old daughter to stop nursing to sleep.

She has howled since she was small if I took the nipple away from her, and even if I get her back to sleep in my arms as soon as I put her down she wakes and cries.

Nothing will stop the crying but letting her nurse. I just started her sleeping in her crib in her own room but I am up so many times, by 2am I usually just bring her into bed with us. Still she will not sleep even beside me unless she can nurse.

I end up sleeping with her attached to my boob all night, and when the nipple falls out her mouth she will fuss and fuss until I help her find it. It's driving me crazy! I also can't seem to get her to nap unless she nurses and falls asleep, she only takes 2 naps a day for about 45mins sometimes less.

If I lie in bed with her and nurse her when she wakes, she will nap longer. But I can't get anything done in the house, and I am so exhausted from such a broken sleep. This is my first child, and I just don't know what to do anymore!

Answer:

Hi Brooke,

It is a tiring situation to be in with a baby that won't sleep without nursing.

I really like the baby sleep solution, but I will admit that in general I don't start to work on a baby going to sleep without nursing to sleep until he/she is a little older - around 9-10 months. I have always co-slept with my babies.

I've found, like the Baby Sleep Solution suggests, that getting your baby to go to sleep for the night without nursing is a first step. Working on wakings during the night comes later.

I have also found that any sort of sleep changes take around 2-3 weeks, so it's best to be patient.

Have you developed a solid routine for bedtime? Make sure you are nursing her well shortly before bedtime, if not nursing her to sleep. I've found that a good nursing session then a short rinse/bath in warm water helps my baby to not "fall asleep nursing."

Stick with the same routine. It can be tough at first. I would recommend you use one of the techniques that keeps you very close to your baby, and realize that you may need quite a few nights of even more disturbed sleep as you're comforting her - and really just focus on that one bedtime sleep.

Like I said, I have not started with really trying to get a little one to sleep much without me, though I have always put my babies down close by me in the evening.

I was able to put Brennan into a bassinet in the same room as me in the evenings and he would sleep for a couple of hours - then I would bring him to bed with me. Galen wouldn't sleep if he was in the same room, so I put him a bassinet one room away from us. Then I would pick him up and take him upstairs to bed with us when we went to sleep.

I got them used to this nighttime routine just by being persistent and regular with bedtimes. I would pick them up and comfort them if needed, but generally did not offer to nurse again shortly after they'd gone to sleep. It took some time - with Galen, especially.

I was OK with letting Galen fuss a little bit when we started the Baby Sleep Solution. He could easily see me. He was not happy about being put down in his bed awake, but he didn't cry. He just fussed. To me, this was OK. Some moms don't feel comfortable with that.

But even with Galen being older at that point (we had moved him upstairs, too) it still took a couple of weeks. He still came to bed with us when we went to bed around 10pm. It took more time for him to drop that nighttime feeding and he has only just recently completely dropped his early morning feeding (around 5am).

So in general, I don't give the best advice about getting baby to sleep completely "through the night."

I did have issues with naps, where the baby would insist on being latched on the entire nap. In that situation, once the baby was older (again, 10-12 months), I would start to nurse the baby before naptime, downstairs, then carry him upstairs and put him in bed. I nap in the same room (I lie down with my children during their afternoon nap) and would gently comfort the child but remain firm that naptime was naptime. Usually this doesn't take long because the baby is already used to going to into his bed at bedtime.

I would recommend first setting up a nighttime routine. Write it down so that it's "set in stone" - and pick one of the Baby Sleep Solution techniques and use that. Don't expect things to happen right away. Plan on 2-3 weeks of really just working on getting her to go to sleep in her bed and sleep for a couple of hours. Once she's doing that, then move on to decreasing her night nursings. Maybe one as you are coming to bed, then put her back in her bed or put on a t-shirt to wear to bed, and another in the early morning. But work on just one point at a time - first the bedtime, then work on night wakings and naps.