This post may contain affiliate links, which means I'll receive a commission if you purchase through my link, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure here.
Welcome to Ask the Village where all of us moms come together to share our best tips, tricks, advice, and support to one another so we can all be each other’s village!
Today’s question: how to stop nursing or feeding to sleep?
The biggest piece of this is breaking the sleep association. Right now your baby associates milk and sleep together, so you have to help them lose that association and there are a variety of ways to do that. Moms suggested tips for ALL ages so no matter your little one’s age these can work.
Sleep training CAN be apart of this, not always. This is all about the gentle sleep training method we used to sleep train our baby.
Someone submitted – why is this a bad thing? It isn’t! There are a variety of reasons why someone might want to work on eliminating this habit from improving baby/mom sleep, to having other caregivers be able to put baby down, to just wanting to, and so much more. If it’s working just fine for you, no need to stop!!
My son nursed to sleep for a bit and we did drop the habit but unintentionally, I wasn’t really trying to it just kind of happened on it’s own so I don’t have good advice to give. I guess what kind of happened was I switched the association to rocking to sleep, and then gradually weaned him off of that – details shared here. Sharing below what has worked for other moms!
Most Common Tip: move feeding to a different part of the routine
Example from a mom: I always do wake, feed, play, sleep so he is used to eating when he wakes up and not right before sleeping! At night it’s a little different – we started setting a routine of bath, feeding, playing independently for a few minutes, then reading a book and bedtime! Our little one always nursed to sleep and it made for long nights but as soon as we put a little interruption between eating and sleeping, he started falling asleep easier and stopped waking in the middle of the night! Also feed them in a bright room (unless in the middle of the night) that way it helps them to not fall asleep while eating!
Another example: I changed the bedtime feed to before bath (or whatever is earlier in the bedtime routine) so I knew my little one had milk and a full belly. It took a few evenings for her to get used to the not having the boob for comfort to go to sleep but she was fine and we’ve now completely stopped breastfeeding dropping one feed at a time. (Little one is 13 months)
Extra tip that goes alongside this: have the non-nursing parent rock the baby to sleep/finish the routine.
Other Tips:
- Similar to above, have your partner do all nap and bedtimes to help break the association
- If your baby is old enough to understand, explain it to them. Or place bandaids over your nipples and tell them they are sore
- Replace bottle with water (if they’re old enough to have water)
- Mommy vacation – have mom leave for the week or weekend (if possible) so it’s not an option
- Sleep training – there are a TON of options and variations with sleep training. Do your research and see what is a good fit for you and your family!
- Slowly feed less and less over the course of a week
- Switch nursing out for a pacifier/dummy/soft cuddly item
- Feed them before turning off the light or in another room baby doesn’t sleep in
- Make sure last feed isn’t too far into their wake window so they aren’t extremely tired
- To help them fall asleep: lie baby down and keep hand on chest, for this mom her baby would fuss for 5-10 then fall asleep
- Start with naps. Night time will naturally follow once they get better at falling asleep without milk
- Someone did cold turkey at 9 months and it took 3 nights
If you have other tips, please share them below! Or if you give any of them a try and they work, please comment. We’d love to hear your experience. Thank you for reading and I hope this helps!
Leave a Reply