How do you put your LO to bed?

mommatotwo2

Hey Gals.

So for almost 19 months I nursed my LO to sleep.  When I weaned 2 weeks ago, we started rocking LO to sleep for naps and bedtime. But this can seriously go on for like an hour and a half.  I don't have time to be sitting in the nursery for an hour and a half every night.  Is there a way for me to just "train" her to go to sleep on her own in her bed, like, we do our bath, books, a few snuggles routine and then put her in bed and walk out of the room? She has her 2 blankets and a couple of stuffed animals, but nothing that she's overly attached to, like a lovey.  I've tried having her cuddle with one of the stuffed animals while I rock her to try and make this lovey connection, but she's not into it at all.  Please tell me there is hope.

c-elizabethf

We usually do something that winds dd down. Then I bring her into her crib, we tuck her in with her stuffed animals. Then we pray together and give each other kisses and she says night night. The past few weeks though she has been fighting it and sleeping weird.

pnutg

We had a bath, book, bottle, bed routine up until 15 months when he no longer took a bottle. Now we take a bath, settle him down (sometimes books, sometimes peter rabbit on tv), and put him to bed with his paci and blanket. He goes down very well and he knows when it's time.

The fact that I didn't nurse him to sleep for long makes our transition much easier than yours. I'm sure that would have changed things for us.

flyliceandcoffee

I'm probably not the right person to be answering this, but you could try sleep training...

we definitely keep to her normal routine (bath, brush and brush, book, then bed), but when we go to bed, we do timed intervals to go in if she doesn't go to bed. We did start this at 5 months, so it might be harder to do now, but most of the time she'll go to bed on her own, even in strange places (with usually just one "visit" at 10 minutes so she knows we're still there).

jesselayne8

It's most likely going to require some crying. No amount of routine is going to work if she doesn't know how to go to sleep on her own. There are some gentle methods like the sleep lady shuffle but ultimately LO has to learn.

huzzahuzza

jesselayne8 said:

It's most likely going to require some crying. No amount of routine is going to work if she doesn't know how to go to sleep on her own. There are some gentle methods like the sleep lady shuffle but ultimately LO has to learn.

Ditto to this. We've had to do our fair share of CIO but J falls asleep on his own...but now that I said that...

bumpuser3155624

We are in the process of sleep training and started just before 18 months. I nursed to sleep until 14 months then we did the walk/ rock to sleep until 18mo when it was just too much.

We are having success with a blend of methods. We do pj's, brush her teeth and then walk for 5 minutes. Then we tell her good night and lay her down. We then will pat her butt/back and shush for about 7-10 minutes. If she's not going down we will kiss her and leave for 5 minutes and then repeat the patting/shushing/crying as needed.

It took us about 3 good weeks before she "got it" so don't give up too quickly. She is still up multiple times at night and we're going to start this for MOTN waking but she had the flu so we cuddled at night a few more times. We'll start tacking MOTN waking this week.

Good luck! Have some wine ready because hearing your Lo cry is hard..

mommatotwo2

Thanks all for sharing your method and for all of the advice, and laughs! I really appreciate it.

I know I totally screwed up by nursing her to sleep for so long, but it was so easy and I was lazy about it It was so easy to just sit down and nurse and play on my phone for a half hour or so every night.  Now I'm paying for it.

I'm not against CIO, I feel sort of bad doing it to her at this age, because she's going to be so confused, but the kid does need to learn how to put herself to bed.  I'm going to look up this sleep lady shuffle thing I keep hearing about that I think one of you mentioned.  When you guys go in and do your checking, do you settle them down, or just pop your head in and show them you are there, or what?

Thanks again.

Angela183

Im still nursing to sleep over here. At daycare they rub her back and she goes right to sleep. So, I know she CAN do it. I guess im still not ready to make the change.

mommatotwo2

@Angela183, same with my LO, she's been going to sleep with a backrub at daycare since 4 months old, so I know it's possible for her, but it doesn't seem to work for me!

Angela183

@mommatotwo2‌ it doesn't work for me either. I rub her back and she just rolls over and tries to run off to play lol.

flyliceandcoffee

when we first started sleep training we would go into her room at the interval and tell her it was time for bed and that she had to go to sleep, but we wouldn't pick her up. Now that she knows how to put herself back to sleep, when we go in, we usually pick her up give her a hug and then we ask her if she's ready to go to bed. Some nights she says yes and points to her crib and then goes to sleep. Other nights, she says no, so we tell her well it's bed time and then we put her back in and wait for another interval. For us, her not wanting to go to sleep isn't so much because she doesn't know how to go to bed on her own, but because she's not ready to go to sleep yet. Just be consistent in whatever you choose to do, it may take a while....

mommatotwo2

maymomNY said:

mommatotwo2 said:

Thanks all for sharing your method and for all of the advice, and laughs! I really appreciate it.

I know I totally screwed up by nursing her to sleep for so long, but it was so easy and I was lazy about it It was so easy to just sit down and nurse and play on my phone for a half hour or so every night.  Now I'm paying for it.

I'm not against CIO, I feel sort of bad doing it to her at this age, because she's going to be so confused, but the kid does need to learn how to put herself to bed.  I'm going to look up this sleep lady shuffle thing I keep hearing about that I think one of you mentioned.  When you guys go in and do your checking, do you settle them down, or just pop your head in and show them you are there, or what?

Thanks again.

I don't think what you did screwed up anything.  You did what was right for your family at the time, and now you are reassessing what might work next.

We have tried CIO off and on since about 10 months (I think?)  Obviously we haven't been real committed.  We are in the process of trying again, with much more success this time.  Her cries used to rip my heart out, but now I can tell she's just pissed off that I'm not doing what she wants.  It sounds less sad, more tantrum.  This makes it tons easier to deal with.

Our routine:

bath, vitamins, teeth, pjs, stories, bed.  She's in a toddler bed now, so I tuck her in, give her a kiss and tell her I love her, then walk out and close the door (because she immediately jumps out of bed and runs to the door).  We started a little over a week ago.  Tonight I didn't even have to go back to check in because she cried at the door for about two minutes, then put herself back in bed in went to sleep.  Some nights it's that easy, other nights we have to check in a few times (roughly 5-10 minute intervals).  The hardest parts for me are naps on the weekend (she's great at daycare) and middle of the night wake-ups when she wants to climb in bed with us.  The trouble is, I love it when she comes in to snuggle at 4 am.  I just don't like getting punched in the face for 2 1/2 hours.  This morning we put her back in bed at 5am and she screamed until 6.  Pure torture.

I think it is important to make check-ins as brief as possible.  I think the main goal is to reassure you and them that everyone is okay.  If I stay more than a few seconds I find myself starting to bargain "If you don't lay down, Mommy has to go bye-bye."  Bargaining with a toddler is ridiculous.

GL!

Thank you for that, I really needed to read it. 

You're right, bargaining with a toddler IS ridiculous and I do it all the time! I really should stop that.

Thanks all for the routines, I'm definitely going to follow suit and hopefully it works out.

mommatotwo2

@bakersck, DD1 has had violet for the past 5 years and goes to sleep with her bedtime music every single night.  Once, a couple of years ago, we lost Violet (temporarily) and bought Scout, and he was made a little differently and never worked as well.  Does your Violet seem to work well? Maybe we'll give it another shot and buy Violet for DD2.  That 10 minutes of bedtime music is awesome.

mommatotwo2

@bakersck, good to know! I think we'll get another one and will try it out again! Our Violet acts weird on occasion, but our Scout was doing it more. Like this weird high pitched sound. Or randomly playing music.  I was hoping our oldest would be ready to give hers up, maybe to sissy- since we were having issues with the new ones- but she's still very attached, so obviously I'm not going to take it away. 

smg2302

We do violet too! We sleep trained at 7 months and found that helpful. She may transition a lot easier than you think especially now that our LOs communicate better. And I agree with PP you did not screw up by nursing your kid to sleep. You made a parenting decision that worked for your family. Keep us updated with what works!

mommatotwo2

Thanks, @smg2302, and everyone!! I'll keep you all posted! So far, we did the jammies, teeth brush, books, songs, and 5 minutes of rocking and into her crib. She cried about 5 minutes. I was just about to head to her room and she stopped. She's been down about 15 minutes! Fingers crossed!

PumpkinAndThePeanut

So it sounds like things are going well, but if the Initial success was a fluke and isn't working so well, I wanted to throw this out there. If you haven't transitioned to a toddler /big kid bed yet, you might want to hold off on any painful transitions until then. I wasn't nursing to sleep anymore and then BAM, we were forced to move to toddler beds and now the only way to get them to sleep is by lying down wih them and nursing /snuggling until they fall asleep. So if you will likely be using the crib for a long while yet, then disregard this, but if you see a toddler bed in your near future, you might consider just waiting until then to change everything?

kelseyhh

We had to sleep train pretty young because Emmett wouldn't sleep more than 30 minutes at a time all night long.
That said, he has been a great sleeper since then (knock on wood). We brush teeth, put on lotion, jammies, an sleep sack. Then, we read a few books, pray, and then cuddle while we sing a few lullabies. Lastly, we put him down awake, he says "nigh,nigh" and rolls over.
Usually he goes to bed right away but sometimes he'll play for up to 30 minutes.

mommatotwo2

Thanks everyone!

The first night went well! She slept all night (about 12 hours), and woke up happy.  I'm really, really hoping that it will last. 

We're planning to keep her in her crib for as long as we can.  We don't need the crib for any future babies, we're done at 2 kids.  We didn't transition DD out of her crib and into a full size bed until she was 3.  It was a lot longer than a lot of parents go, but she was happy in there, and not trying to climb out.  This LO is an absolute monkey and so I'm really worried about what she'll do or get into if she does start climbing out of her crib. 

surpriseaddition

I agree I don't think you did anything wrong nursing to sleep. I did it for a long time too. Now I nurse her about a half hour before I want to put her down. Then all we do is say "time for night, night" and either my 16 yo DD1 or DH carry her upstairs and put her in her crib. She goes right down. But, I will say we use a 30 minute window where we put her to bed, based upon when she looks tired. Somedays she's ready at 8pm, but other nights we wait until 8:30. Hope it's still going well. For naps, the majority of the time it's in the car while I'm picking DS up from school. With the break, I have been nursing her to sleep since I'm lazy!

mommatotwo2

That's awesome @surpriseaddition, I really hope we can get to that point with our LO! I'll admit it- I had a harder time giving up that nurse to sleep time than she did! It was my quiet, peaceful, wind down time at the end of a long day! It made me sleepy and ready to go to bed too.

surpriseaddition

^ ^ I agree! Nursing puts me to sleep too. I use those 30 minutes between the nursing and her bedtime to wrap up the house (pick up any last minute cups/dishes and run dishwasher, tidy up, etc.) I'm always in bed by 9pm at the latest. I may need to replace that nursing with wine....

mommatotwo2

surpriseaddition said:

^ ^ I agree! Nursing puts me to sleep too. I use those 30 minutes between the nursing and her bedtime to wrap up the house (pick up any last minute cups/dishes and run dishwasher, tidy up, etc.) I'm always in bed by 9pm at the latest. I may need to replace that nursing with wine....

Now that's a GREAT idea!!