contemplating weaning ds from needing milk to fall asleep

[jessaroo]

My ds is 26 months old.  For the most part he relies on milk to fall asleep.  When he is being cared for by people other than myself he rarely falls asleep.  He will go all day without a nap.  So we end up playing catch up when we are together.  I am finding this to be challenging as the length of time we spend nursing to sleep has gotten longer and longer.  Any tips for transitioning him to be able to fall asleep without milk?  I am not rushing into this but rather trying to assess what makes sense for us.

thanks.

[sundaya]

My DD is 28 months old, and very similar, in that she only would fall asleep nursing. I really didn't see how it could work...
I first tried the Pantley routine. Basically, you remove the nipple earlier and earlier until they learn to fall asleep without. That really just made her mad. But, I know it works for some people.

What worked for us was to just totally change our bedtime routine. Instead of nursing falling right before sleep, it moved to the front of the routine, after we got in bed, but before book and back rubbing. We talked about it a lot before hand. The first couple of nights, when she got too upset, I would nurse her for 10 seconds ( I told her ahead of time, and she was already familiar with this limit). It took about an hour with me laying next to her/snuggling the first couple of nights. Since then, maybe 10-15 minutes from the time our bedtime routine is over until I can leave the bed. We're trying to transition DH into the routine now, but so far without much luck. If he's there, it's time to play....

Good luck!

[nd01]

We're working on this too (DS is 20 mos).  It is problematic in that I can never be away for a night but I actually have to be at a wedding in May that he isn't traveling too so we started now.  We have started just doing it for nighttime (the removal of the nipple early was also annoying to my son) so my husband just reads to him and lays with him for his nighttime sleep.  Once we get that pretty settled, we'll move onto naps eventually but not as important for us.  Good luck! 

[ssh]

Have you tried leaving expressed milk for your DS? Does he always nap when you take care of him during the day? Many 2 years stop taking naps.