How can I get my 2 year old to fall asleep without having to nurse?

[randihope]

I am currently pregnant and it's getting to be really painful and a lot of responsibility to nurse my 2 year old to sleep both for naps and for nighttime.

There have been only a handful of times where my husband has been able to rock him to sleep without nursing. I have night-weaned which has made my life a bit more manageable but sometime he nurses for such a long time to get to sleep that it gets very painful and I don't know how I will be able to continue to do that with a newborn.

Any suggestions? Without making him cry uncontrollable forever?

[Chloe'sMama]

Well, DD2 is just over 2 and still has a paci.... so, I give her an allotted time to nurse, say 5-10 minutes and then say 'milk time is over' and give her the paci... It was hard for a few weeks, but now she will just roll over and go to sleep.  

I am 24 weeks pregnant and the nipple pain is back and making it hard to nurse past about 10 minutes.  I used the same process with DD1 while pregnant with DD2 (she also still had the paci while I was pregnant).  This is one of the reasons I didn't want to take it away from DD2 while I am pregnant... I don't want to be the paci while nipples are so sensitive.

I think you can just count down and say the milk is going to bed until the sun comes up..... I think it will be a challenge, but if you are there with him and comfort him and hug him, it won't be too traumatic.  

[randihope]

Thanks for your input.

We never used a paci- so my son hasn't a substitute to turn to. I can see where that would come in handy. We tried the count down - until the sun comes up- and he will become hysterical and won't calm down. that's when i just give in and nurse to sleep. 

This is very difficult but i also know i will nurse differently with the next 

[Monday]

I've only just found out i'm pregnant and nips are already stinging especially after feeding so I was thinking about this last night while feeding DS to sleep.  Usually at bedtime we are silent, he feeds (sometimes for up to an hour or more!)then sleeps.  But last night I tried feeding for just 20 mins then when he took a little break and was still awake but dozy said "lets talk about what you've done today" really quietly and calmy, got him to think about things eg. went for a walk with... (he fills in th blankswith his new words) and that to my surprise got him so sleepy that he went to sleep after about 20 mins (maybe I just bored him to sleep!).  I'm going to try this every night and aim reduce feed time down to 5 minutes at bedtimes.   

[skycheattraffic]

My 18 month old still nurses to sleep most of the time but she also is thirsty. There have been times when she would nurse for up to an hour and couldn't relax but after some water from her sippy she would settle and drift off in a few minutes without further nursing. It may be worth a try.

[randihope]

Awesome suggestion! I will try this. Thanks!

[P.J.]

I got this suggestion from someone here and it worked like a charm for us (my son was 27 months when we did this):

We moved the pre-sleep nursing to before we got into bed. We were also cosleeping in my bed and what we would do as part of the bedtime routine was go on his bed in his room and nurse there. Then we moved into my room and my bed for sleep. I was totally amazed that this worked! A few times he protested and cried when I ended the nursing session and said it was time for bed, but other than that I couldn't believe it when he actually fell asleep without nursing, and no protest! It did take awhile longer for him to fall asleep, so be prepared for that, and to be honest ~it's a few months later now and we have all sorts of new bedtime struggles that didn't exist before. I think this has more to do with him reaching 2 1/2 than that we weaned, though. Anyway I was not planning to cut out this last nursing session for awhile, but after a couple weeks he himself would forget and be distracted by stories and whatnot that it just naturally got dropped. In fact I didn't even realize it when it was the last time we ever nursed.....it was that easy and child-led!

Best of luck mama!