I’m wondering what will happen the day my daughter stops nursing to sleep. Can you share w me your experience?

[lily_pad_96]

@marieflore Yeah, actually now that I think about it... she didn’t really nurse to sleep until 6 months? This includes naps too. During the newborn days, she’d sometimes stay awake and sometimes sleep when I nursed her

 

[marieflore]

@lily_pad_96 Okay that makes me feel better, thank you so much for taking the time to reply!!

 

[zino299]

@marieflore Mine was the same, I thought it was weird too as I heard of all these people who nurses to sleep but my LO was just happy feeding, then having a play but needed to be rocked and shhhhed to sleep. Then when he was around 4 months, he just started falling asleep on the boob. He is now 9 months and I am trying to reduce it for day naps as I go back to work soon and my SO will be at home during the day. He will still get to nurse to sleep at night, just not for naps.

 

[marieflore]

@zino299 Another reassuring answer, thank you so so much.

 

[katrina2017]

@lily_pad_96 When my daughter turned five years old she was still nursing to sleep most nights, but started falling to sleep sometimes while I read her a story or sang her a song. That is, at 5 years old she sometimes said she didn’t want to nurse so I read/sang to her instead. She’d conk out just the same. It was awesome because I was afraid that if I didn’t nurse her to sleep she’d be hard to put to bed. By 5.5 years old she self weaned.

Now she’s 7.5 years old and I always just read her a novel in the dark and she falls asleep quickly. Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, even adult novels like a Wind in Jamaica or Moby Dick, so I get to enjoy bedtime too - I get to reread all my favorites to her. And she still falls to sleep easily and enjoys bedtime.

I should mention we still cosleep.

As she grew if she wasn’t falling asleep easily I’d just push back her bedtime a bit. That also made bedtime easy and stress free so she wasn’t trying to go to bed when she wasn’t tired enough.

 

[giangnt]

@katrina2017 We co sleep too. My 5 year old still takes a bottle and my 3.5 yo still nurses. So I'm assuming at 5.5 is when they start to self wean? I always thought it was 3 but my son is no where near the end lol we are also doing the self weaning thing. Not a ton of people support this method of parenting. Glad to see a similar parent.

 

[katrina2017]

@giangnt That’s great! Glad you’re going with the flow. The self weaning age isn’t certain, but I’ve read it’s likely about 4-6 years old. I’d say looking at my own daughter 4 would’ve been too early. Up to 6 years is totally normal in some villages. I’m American but I moved to Turkey. In Turkey the standard weaning age is 2 years old - no one stops before then, that I’ve talked to. But there are a lot of villages with people from the balkans and a lot of them have told me they nursed their kids to 6. Also in Africa this late self weaning age is normal. But kids really stop wanting it at a certain point, the desire just turns off.

 

[giangnt]

@katrina2017 I'm in America and so badly want to move to a village right now lol in the us breastfeeding this late is so taboo drives me crazy.

 

[blessed4dayz]

@lily_pad_96 my 26mth old just had to stop feeding to sleep because my milk dried up when i fell pregnant. It was really tough at first, we had to take him for walks in the pram and carrier to get him to sleep. Slowly we got him to understand laying down with lots of patience and modelling. We now use the moshi app and it’s been a month of him just laying down holding hands and drifting off to a story on that.

 

[wini]

@lily_pad_96 My first stopped falling asleep nursing around 9 or 10 months. She was then rocked to sleep. Then she got too big and is cuddled to sleep. She is 5 years old.

My second pretty much never fell asleep feeding after the initial newborn phase. He decided he didn't want to breastfeed from 6 months. He is rocked or cuddled to sleep after his bottle. He is almost 10 months old.

Last night I got to cuddle them both back to sleep at the same time (5 year old was sleeping in the bed in the baby's room, he was in the cot but him waking up woke her up so we all ended up in the bed).