What do you consider "nursing to sleep?"

stoneycakes · August 2012

Is nursing to sleep letting your LO fall asleep at the breast and then carefully transferring them to wherever they sleep without waking or just nursing them before bed so they're drowsy before the rest of their sleep routine?

tokenhoser · August 2012

"Nursing to sleep" is nursing... to sleep. Like, nursing until they are sleeping.

We nurse at bedtime, but he hasn't fallen asleep at the breast in a really long time. He falls asleep in his crib now.

aliska · August 2012

tokenhoser:
"Nursing to sleep" is nursing... to sleep. Like, nursing until they are sleeping.
We nurse at bedtime, but he hasn't fallen asleep at the breast in a really long time. He falls asleep in his crib now.

This is us too. She pushes away when she is done and is mad if I give her anything but her paci.

Still free to be me · August 2012

I agree. "Nursing to sleep" is nursing until LO is asleep. The second example is nursing and then putting baby in bed drowsy, but awake.

DD1 nursed to sleep until she was well past two years old. When I got pregnant, I had so little supply left that she would nurse for a few seconds, then unlatch and fall asleep. Now that baby is born, she nurses for under a minute on each side, then we cuddle to sleep.

DD2 has never nursed to sleep. I struggled to nurse her to sleep, because in my mimd, that was how babies fell asleep, based on my experiences with DD1. Finally, I figured out that this baby just wants to be laid in bed to fall asleep on her own.

stoneycakes · August 2012

Ha ha, okay. I guess that was a dumb question. My DS sometimes falls asleep nursing, but wakes up again as soon as I move him so I couldn't really picture this based on my own experience.

anna7602 · August 2012

I nursed to sleep for 18 months. DD would fall asleep at the breast and I would gently pull her off and place her in her crib. Or not do anything at all if we were bed-sharing- eventually she would either unlatch in her sleep or I would move away unconsciously.

mwitter80 · August 2012

When nursing to sleep, you have to wait to move them once they pass the first stage of sleep in most cases, which is around 15 minutes. You know baby has reached that stage when their limbs go limp (you can pick up and drop without disturbing baby). I do this at nap time. We co-bed at night though and he latches on and off as he pleases.