6 Months Old Nursing to Sleep

by Anonymous

Help!

I am a first time mom and my husband works away from home.

I started bringing my baby to bed with me at night when he was 3 months old because he was getting up every two hours for feeding and found that was the only way I could make it through the day with him.

Also, he does not know how to sleep on his own, only when he is nursing. What do I do to get him to sleep longer at night and also in his crib without nursing him?

I can't handle letting him cry himself to sleep are there any other suggestions of ways to deal with these issues?








Baby Help Line Response:



Hi first time mom!

I think you did completely right to take your baby to your bed at 3 months! This way you both probably got more and better sleep and nothing is really more important when you have a newborn baby.

Now, if you want to help him learn how to fall asleep without nursing, here are a few things you can do:

• First of all, make sure that your baby eats enough during the day. 6 months is a growth spurt and many babies sleep really bad at this age. So fill him up ƒº and give his sleep training a month before you evaluate it.



• Use the stroller. When your baby is becoming tired, put him in his stroller and rock him until he is almost asleep. Slowly stop and let him fall asleep. If he starts crying or whining, start rolling the stroller again until he is calm. And so on. This is a way to teach you baby to fall asleep without you. Once he is a sleep, put him in his crib.



• Does he use a pacifier? If not, consider giving one to him. Form many babies this really simplifies the transition from nursing to sleep.



• Does he accept the bottle? For some babies it is very efficient to simply offer them water in a bottle when they wake up at night instead of the breast. Faster than you could ever guess, they start sleeping better.



• Let your baby sleep with dad. This might be hard in your case, as your husband works from home. But if he is ever home for a long weekend or a vacation, have your baby sleep with him instead of you. Make it your husband¡¦s job to soothe your baby by rocking him, giving him the pacifier patting him or whatever works. I¡¦ve tried this and I now several other moms too that have been very surprised with how fast their baby has learned to fall asleep without the breast. (You don¡¦t even have to stop nursing him completely at night. When we did this with our daughter, we decided that my husband would try for 5 minutes, then she would be allowed to nurse. Within three days our daughter went from waking up every hour to twice a night. One month later she slept through the night.