Co-sleeping to Self-Soothing Sleep

graceconger

I have two silly questions for a mother of a one year old. 1) How do you stop nursing to sleep 2) How do you get that baby into his own bed with very limited crying? I know that teaching a little one to sleep on their own is easier when you start young, but I have really good excuses! I work full time and my son is in day care from 7:30-5:30 5 days a week and the truth is that I miss him, I feel like he doesn't get enough mama time, because i KNOW I don't get enough baby time. So when I finally get him home, I let him nurse when he wants to nurse and cuddle mom as much as he needs. That means that he nurses to- almost sleep every night. To be honest, I don't even know how to put him to sleep without nursing. So my 1st question is how do other nursing moms do this. Secondly, I still love sleeping with my little man, and my husband doesn't mind either, but I feel like it is time to move him into his own crib. Unfortunately, he is still waking up about 3 times a night 10:30, 1:00 and 4:00 to nurse every night. Whenever I try to put him in his crib he wakes up as soon as I lay him down. Then, he gets so worked up he does that crying where he forgets to breathe and his lips start turning blue, and even after I pick him back up he softly cries for another 5 minutes before he will want to nurse and the cycle continues. Does anyone have any suggestions? 

harpyogi

First I am no expert at this as we just went through the transition with my son (13 months). Here's what we did. Started by only letting him nurse until he was drowsy than gave him his pacifier and rocked him to sleep. Or more effective I'd nurse him about 30 minutes before going down for the night and my husband would do the bedtime routine. Then once he got really comfy with that system (not crying or whining) we decided on a week to night wean him (helped that I had pneumonia and had to sleep to heal so we had no choice). Anytime Tris woke up my husband would be the one to soothe him back to sleep in his crib so he wasn't tempted to nurse. His crying was way less with hubby because he wasn't reminded of the option to nurse. The first night he woke twice and it took Greg quite a while to get him back down. He'd do everything- rock him, sing to him, pace the room holding him etc. Night two was probably the worst. But by the fourth night he slept the whole night (first time ever in over a year!!). He did that for about a week, but now occasionally gets up once during the night. I admittedly nurse him sometimes but cut him off before he's asleep and pop his binky in instead. He seems to do better sleeping through the night if I put him down as he sort of gets topped off before sleepy time. Best part is he still wants snuggle time in the early morning so I don't feel I lost any cuddles or bonding time. Hope this helps and good luck!

graceconger

Thank you, I appreciate your input.  my husband is uncomfortable with the idea of being the one to put him back to sleep, but we are willing to try.