Getting my second child to stop nursing to sleep

*original publication date July 2, 2019

As many of you have read my first son was a terrible sleeper! He had colic, reflux and tongue tie so he had a rough go at it so getting him to sleep through the night was a completely different ballgame than it is for my second son. (If you have a child with colic or a more difficult temperament check out my other article on getting my first son to sleep through the night) My second son has a much easier going personality, always smiling (at least if he is being held haha) and he is just a happy little dude. But, he is also very attached to me.

I ended up having to exclusively pump with my first son. So, even though he only had breastmilk the first 7 months of his life it does not create the same physical attachment that breastfeeding does. So, with my second son, I started breastfeeding him to sleep. And, hey that worked great for a little while. Until it didn’t. Which is how every sleep association is, it is good until it isn’t. Soon he wouldn’t sleep at all unless I nursed him to sleep and held him! So finally after two weeks of basically never sleeping, enough was enough and I had to figure out how to transition from my son being completely dependent on me to sleep to getting him to sleep on his own. So, here is how I did it!

I don’t agree with cry it out (at least not at this age. For my 2 year old who just wants me to sleep on his floor so he can sing Twinkle Twinkle in a death metal voice to me all night is a different story) so that wasn’t on the table for me for sleep training. So how was I going to go from a complete stage five clinger to a little me time without making him feel abandoned and scared? This is when I came up with a 5 step plan to get me and my son to a healthier and easier bedtime routine.

How do these steps work?

Every baby will respond to each step at their own pace. For my son, it took about a week for the first step to really be mastered while the next four only took around three days. So, don’t rush it! How do you know your baby is ready to move on to the next step? They aren’t resistant to what you are trying to do. The behavior change will become their new normal and then you know it is time to shake things up again and move on to the next step. Just keep in mind every baby is different and each step will be different for every baby. If your baby is extremely resistant and it turns into them never getting any sleep at night or during naps take a day off to reset. If you and your baby haven’t slept in 24 hours you will be in no place to make progress towards a healthy sleep routine. Your baby will be overtired and nothing is going to soothe them and you are going to have very little patience. Alright, so let’s get to it!

Step one: No more momcifier

So what does this mean? You have to get your baby to stop treating you as a pacifier to get to or stay asleep. Which is difficult on a couple of levels. It is a really nice feeling when you can calm your baby when no one else can. It really makes you feel special! So it is really hard to decide to lose that feeling but as moms, we have to make a lot of tough choices and do what is best for our kids not what is best for us no matter how much we will miss the feeling of being our baby’s entire world.

So, now that I’m crying over my baby growing up let’s get on with it. For this step I found the easiest and least tears filled way to achieve breaking the momcifier trend is to breastfeed like usual and as soon as they stop actively sucking replace your nipple with a pacifier. They may be a little resistant to this at first because any breastfeed baby when given a choice will choose the boob. So, give it time and keep in mind there will be some growing pains for you both but don’t give in. As soon as baby realizes mom is no longer their pacifier they will start taking a regular pacifier more and more without the fuss. Once they take the pacifier without any problems it is time to move on to step two!

Step 2: No nursing within an hour before bedtime

So now that you have broken the momcifier cycle it is time to break the food-sleep association. Like I said before, every sleep association is good until it isn’t. So, if you want your baby to start sleeping longer stretches and not need you to breastfeed every time they wake up at night you need to break the food=sleep association. So you need to not breastfeed within an hour of bedtime. There won’t be a real difference if you move it back five minutes at a time or if you jump straight to an hour I actually think it is better to jump straight to the full hour. For the first few nights, your baby is going to be upset simply because they have associated sleep with food so now they need to develop a new sleep trigger. Now is the time to decide on a quick and easy bedtime routine that you can do every night. So the key here is quick and easy! Ten minutes or less. For both of my sons, our routine is bath (well we don’t bath my 5-month-old every night), jammies, book, lullaby, rock, and sleep. You don’t want to create a new routine that you will get exhausted from in a few months and have to start this all over again so keep it short and sweet.

Just like the previous step it is going to take a little while for your baby to get used to not nursing to calm themselves and trigger sleepiness. So be prepared for some fussiness for a couple of nights but definitely keep rocking and comforting them to sleep until they are completely asleep then transfer them to their crib or bassinet. One way to keep them asleep while you transfer them is to keep the temperature change as minimal as possible. A lot of the time what wakes a baby up while being moved is the sudden cold they feel after being so cuddled up and warm on you. So I would put a heating pad on low/medium heat in my son’s bassinet and move it just before I tried to transfer him. I would also put a burp cloth between his body and mine so when I transferred him the warm blanket would be with him. As I put him in the bassinet he wouldn’t feel cold on his front half and when he would reach out to try and keep hugging me he would have something there to grab onto. I would never leave him alone if he had the burp cloth and once he was totally asleep in the bassinet I would take away the burp cloth so he was sleeping on his back with nothing else in his bed with him. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends all babies be put to sleep on their backs with nothing in the crib with them at all. Now on to step three!

Step 3: Put them down drowsy

Alright now we are cooking and halfway to getting your baby to stop nursing to sleep and start falling asleep on their own. So once you have broken the nursing to sleep cycle and removed the food association it is time to put your baby down drowsy and not fully asleep. What made this step much easier for me was the fact that my son slept in the Halo Basinet swivel sleeper and I was able to rock him without him being in my arms. But, if your baby is already in a completely stationary basinet or crib where you can’t move it at all to rock them that is ok you will just need to put your hand on their chest to gently rock their body back and forth. For this step do whatever it takes to get your baby asleep short of picking them up. So you can sing, rock them, rub their head whatever soothes your baby. Just start the process while they are drowsy and laying on their back in their basinet/crib.

For some babies this is the hardest step to conquer because it requires a little bit of self-soothing. So if you are a parent that can’t stand to hear your baby cry for even a second this step will be the hardest because you have to let them get a little uncomfortable to learn how to soothe themselves. But, I am going to reiterate I don’t agree with the cry it out method so if your baby has moved from fussiness and a little bit of crying to full blown hysterics it may be time to pick them up and get them fully asleep for the night and try again tomorrow. Once your baby can fall asleep in their basinet not your arms you are ready for step four!

Step 4: Put your baby down fully awake and comfort them

We are so close to the finish line I can taste it! Alright so it is now time to put your baby to bed fully awake and not drowsy at all. When you put them down you can comfort them just like you did when you put them down drowsy but try not to comfort them unless they are fussing for a little while. Try and let them soothe themselves. I also gave my son his favorite blanket (which you can find here. It is amazing!! He loves it. It is the newborn size so it is really small barely big enough to cover his body). He would rub the blanket with his hands and cuddle it which helped him fall asleep. And, once again when he was fully asleep I would remove the blanket and never leave him alone if the blanket was in the basinet with him. Once your baby can fall asleep in their basinet/crib from fully awake with a little help it is finally time to move on to step five the final step!

Step 5: Put your baby down fully awake

Yay! You made it and now your baby is ready to be put down fully awake and get themselves to sleep on their own. The first three nights of this I gave my baby his blanket but didn’t do anything else to help him get to sleep and after about and hour of him talking and rolling around with his blanket he would fall asleep. On the fourth night I put him in his basinet with nothing but his pacifier and he fell asleep in about an hour and now we are about two weeks into this routine and he falls asleep in about 20 minutes without any help or any blanket.

When your baby can get themselves to sleep without you having to nurse them to sleep and being stuck glued to their side all day and night it gives you the freedom for self-care. When you get a break it helps your mental health which helps not only your own sanity but it will also improve every relationship in your life. I know when I never got a break from my baby every second of time I had without my baby needed to be alone time I didn’t have anything left to give. So, now that I have my evenings free again and I have a break every day I don’t feel the need to hoard my alone time. I can spend time with my husband, friends, family, and pets without feeling like I want to scream. As moms, we tend to put ourselves last but we need to take some time for self-care if we want to be the best mom we can.