Breaking the sucking association (9mo)

[Sordina]

I have found some good advice here already in the forum, and have started using techniques from the No-Cry Sleep Solution, but I would like to know if anyone has some advice--or can even just say they have a baby this old with a similar habit!--about getting my 9mo to sleep.

He is a "high needs" baby--a very happy boy but nurses a lot, takes short naps and needs to be held and moving most of the time. He sleeps with me at night, and he usually naps with/on me too, either falls asleep nursing in the chair or nursing in bed. If I try to unlatch and get up, he wakes up most of the time. It is getting better bit by bit, but the toughest thing is at night when he gets to his "transition" between sleep cycles. He ALWAYS looks for the breast and starts crying and screaming if I don't give it to him. We are now walking him to sleep if we can, but at night he's always looking for that breast. I have only had luck two or three times putting him in the bed when he is "sleepy but not asleep." I feel like I should have addressed this months ago, but my brain kept telling me he wasn't ready to do it another way yet. Does anyone have any sage words of advice?

Thanks!

[ssh]

I was never ever able to put my DD to sleep without nursing until much older. I think she was about 3 the first time she went to sleep just snuggling. I did get really good at unlatching though, right around 10 months old. It didn't work well when DD was teething. I do know someone whose baby sleeps with a pacifier. The mom puts a pacifier in her DD's mouth as soon as she unlatches her. The little girl doesn't seem to be able to stay asleep unless she's sucking.

[vegrunr]

I do this with a pacifier.   I didn't want to use it at all, much less for him to need it to fall asleep but it works.  He needs to suck so for now, that's what we use.  Often he will spit it out after he's in deeper sleep anyway, so at least he isn't sleeping with it ALL the time.  He uses it for naps and at night I unlatch him and pop it in right away.