Follow up to 6-Month-old Naps...

I'm a big fan of Weissbluth. Yes, you want to teach her self soothing skills now unless you want to be on here a year from now with the same problem! Having been in the same situation as you (other than my baby was 5 months old when I stopped) I can tell you that the easiest way to phase out the nursing to sleep is to start with the bedtime first. Keep naptimes the same for now. Use Weissbluth's recommendations for bedtime, but nurse to sleep at naps.

Another option for you would be to use the pacifier to get her off of you. I used the pacifier as a transition. It made things easier for him and me. After he learned to fall asleep without me in the room, I started to get rid of the pacifier.

I have been through sleep training with two, one difficult and one not. My 2 year old sleeps from 7:30pm to 8:00am and takes a 2 hour nap and my 1 year old sleeps 6:30pm to 7:45am and takes a 2-3 hour nap. I put them both to bed awake every night and have NO night waking. Sleep training is very important and it works! Good for you for trying to fix the problem early. Email me if you want any more support.

A.

R.,
Don't feel like the worst mother, you love your baby and you are trying to do the best you can. Being worried about doing the right thing clearly says that you are a good mom:)
Try these tips and schedule and see if it helps...
Baby's this age sleep 5-7 hrs at night. and need a total of 13-15 hrs every 24 hrs. Figure out how many hrs she is getting at night, then see how many more she needs to hit that 13-15 hrs. Divide that into two or three hr stretches (however long her naps usually are)and then give her that many naps a day. *I also suggest feeding her when she wakes up* rather then right before she goes to sleep. It makes it so much easier to tell when they are tired, because you know that they are not hungry when they start getting fussy, they must be tired. Then once she start avoiding your eyes or getting slightly fussy, you just can do your nap or night time routine, and put her down, no nursing.
Here is an example...
If she gets 6hrs at night, that leaves 6-9 hrs of naps, I would try for three long naps. So that is about 3-4 naps a day. Then I just split that up with her waking hrs. So if she goes to sleep at 9 wakes up at 3am and eats and goes back to sleep and wakes at 6-7am then she would be awake for two hrs, nap for two, wake for three nap for two wake for three nap for two wake until bedtime.
I think it is easier to change the naps first. Night time is a longer stretch and she will need to nurse before bed anyway. I just don't worry about if they wake up when I put them down I still just kiss them and say "night night" and lay them down, and leave.
The most important thing you can do right now is feed her when she gets up instead of before she goes to bed. (except for middle of night feeding) Pick anther bed time tradition to do, like reading a book or hold her and sing her a song. Tell her how much you love her kiss her and snuggle her and then lay her down and smile at her and tell her night night, or whatever words you choose to use, but say and do the same thing every time. And then leave, turn on some music and busy yourself with other things. After 1/2 hr, if she is still crying go in and do the same thing, and leave again. After 1/2 hr do it all again until it has been 2hrs. then go in and say"time to get up!" and get her up and have a happy face and feed her. The next time it is time for a nap (in two or three hrs) it will be easier and she probably will fall asleep after just a little bit of crying.
The most important thing is that you decide what is best for your baby and you stay consistent. By helping her learn how to go to sleep now you will be helping her and you in the future, when her lungs are bigger and louder and she can stand up! The sooner you do this the easier it will be.
I also give my babies a lovie when they are around 5 months, something to snuggle and suck on or rub, what ever helps them to get back to sleep on their own.
Good luck, be brave, she can do this!
E.

PS If you want more info feel free to send me a message. I can tell you where I found this info and how it has worked for me or any other questions you have.

my son nursed before bed and naps until 9 months. he was generally mostly awake when i laid him down. he had a pacifier and a stuffed monkey. i saw nothing wrong with nursing him before sleep. at 9 months he decided he didn't want to nurse before sleep and so he started going to sleep without it at night but still nursed before nap up until 12 months it was just our routine. I say if it works for both of you then go with it. I let my son lead me to what he needed and it work out fine for us. he stopped night nursing at 7 months with out me forcing him to. i would have fed him when ever he wanted. i hope you and your baby can work it out between yourselves. It really is a personal choice :)

I'm not a CIO mom at all and neither is my husband so we agreed on that from the very beginning. Nursing your baby to sleep is not a "bad habit" to break. I nursed my older daughter every single night til she turned 3 and at 3 she potty trained so I night weaned her and she just rolled over and went to bed. And now at almost 4 she is a very intelligent, independent and wonderful kid and sleeper. My son will be 2 on Sunday and just recently he stopped falling asleep at the breast, not so much because I stopped him but because he stopped actually falling asleep and just wanted to stay up and nurse all night! So I decided to stop him and he would fool around a little bit and then just go to sleep eventually.

Self-soothing is a term that the CIO camp invented to justify letting their babies cry. It doesn't matter what you call it, crying is not soothing any way you look at it. It wasn't right for me or my children and I'm confident that no baby "needs" to cry, just that some parents are choosing to use this method. You should't feel that your baby is somehow inadequate because she doesn't happily play in her crib alone and just drift off to sleep. Those are the babies in commercials :)
I'm not saying that there aren't some babies that are that easy going and will just go to sleep on their own but they are the exception to the rule.

You don't seem like you want to let her cry, you just think that you should do it because you've read the book on it. There are plenty of books that don't use this method and most of the world doens't for that matter. Plenty of developed, and un-developed, countries bed share with their children and nurse them to sleep and their kids turn out to be productive and happy citizens. Our country has so many older kids with tons of sleep issues and I don't think it's coincidence to say it's because they are more insecure because they never slept close to their parents and were forced to cry all night long.

That being said, I don't think a little cry it out can be harmful, for certain babies. I know my older one never would have responded to it and had I forced it, she would have certainly become detached. Had we believed in it, my second child most likely would have learned to STTN at a much younger age but we chose to respond to their needs day or night.

I'll step down from my soapbox now but if you'd like to message me to talk about non-sleeping babies, I could write the book on it :)
Best wishes for peaceful nights,
M.

First of all, you should not feel like a bad mother. You are a great mother. I nurse my son to sleep for his naps (when I am home) and everynight and he sleeps through the night, so that is not the problem.
I think the problem is that you and your husband are on different pages. When my son was 5 months, and getting up every hour, we decided it was time to implement the weisbluth method. It worked great for our son and for our family, but both my husband and I were on board.
Please don't think that you need to stop nursing in order for her to learn self-soothing skills. Send me a private message if you need more support or have more questions.

You need to decide if you want to use Weissbluth's methods (extinct, gradual extinct, etc.) or not. If you're going to go with extinction and let her cry it out, then you need to remain consistent. You cannot change your mind after 25 minutes and go get her and then expect her not to cry for 25 minutes and even longer the next time - she learns that if she cries long enough and hard enough that you will go get her. I'm certainly not saying that you have to do CIO; what I am saying is that whatever method you choose - from nursing her to sleep, to checking/calming every 5 minutes, or to cio/extinction - you need to be consistent.

If the crying makes you feel horrible, then don't do it. Give her the boob. I think you know in your heart of hearts, though that one of two things will eventually happen: she'll either make the decision on her own that she no longer needs the boob to go to sleep (very few babies voluntarily give this up, but some do...maybe you'll get lucky and your baby will do this) or one day you'll have to make the decision that she no longer gets the boob to soothe herself to sleep.

None of us walk in your shoes or live in your life, so you have to make the decision that works best for you. I chose to teach my son self-soothing at 6 months. The first night he cried 45 minutes. It was heart-wrenching, but I knew he was crying because he A) was tired, B) needed to sleep and C) had relied on me to do the work for him. The second night he cried 15 minutes. The third night he barely put up a fuss. And...after that he started sleeping 12 hours at night, had a 60-90 minute nap in the morning and a 120+ minute nap in the afternoon with a nightly bedtime of 6:30. On top of that, because he was so well-rested he was just such an unbelievably happy baby and a joy to be around.

It all depends on what you want to do, but no matter what you do, remain consistent.