My happy toddler

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

The beloved security blanket by Barron

I believe that breastfeeding allows her the ability to thrive in this new environment because breastfeeding (and the closeness with me) is a constant. She knows that she is free to explore but she can always come back to the security and safety of snuggle time with Mama. My older children are handling the transition well, but the baby is absolutely loving it. It hasn’t bothered her to change bedrooms or beds. She nurses to sleep and nurses throughout the night and as long as she has that night-time nursing, she’s happy! When she wakes up, she calls out for me and does not cry. It’s been a huge help to me to be nursing during this time.  My child does not need a security blanket or a pacifier. She has me and she has breastfeeding.

What about you? Have you found that breastfeeding serves more than nutritional needs? Does breastfeeding help with transitions from one activity to another or one place to another?

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

I remember feeling a little betrayed by the attachment parenting experts who basically said, “Deal with it. This too shall pass,” a lot frustrated with the exhaustion, and a little baffled by what to do about the problem. I was not willing to let my nursling cry-it-out, but I was not sure what else might work. Here is the question from reader Jennifer L.:

I met a mama of a 17-month-old in the park today and of course, “The question” came up. She looked at my 14-month-old and asked in a fair, even tone, “Is yours sleeping through the night?” Even without knowing this person, the sound of victory rang through clearly in her question. Her daughter was sleeping soundly and happily due to their hard work “sleep training.” Their daughter is happy and cheerful all day and goes to sleep easily thanks to the “Sleep Easy Solution.”

My daughter only has four teeth, and I imagine 10 are in the process of breaking though, but this has been our hypothesis for the last 5 months and we’re kind of worried the others might not pop through until well after she starts kindergarten. At any rate, she is still waking up at least twice a night or more to nurse. She still needs me to put her to sleep and she has (gasp!) the habit of falling asleep while nursing.

After talking with this mama at the park, my daughter and I rode home on our bike as fast as we could to read every review of the “Sleep Easy Solution” and then we had to re-read everything that came up when I ask Google to search for “Will my toddler *ever* sleep through the night?” Oddly enough, Dr. Sears and family always come up first and I often want to blame them that we’re in this boat to begin with. I read the articles out loud with hopes that my daughter will pick up on the idea that we’re brainstorming ideas to help her sleep.

I really liked your article on getting your child to sleep through the night, and I guess I want to hear about more mommies who managed to survive lots and lots of nightly nursing sessions. The thing is, sometimes she wakes up and cries and nursing doesn’t immediately put her back to sleep. She often wants to practice bouncing on the bed at 3 am (it’s the new thing you know!). Or she just has to cry because she’s so tired and can’t sleep.

My husband is confident that she’ll just learn to sleep through the night on her own. At tired moments, my confidence wanes. I want the easy solution. I want her to be well rested and 30 minutes of everyone crying-it-out for two days sounds very appealing sometimes–if we could all get some sleep afterward. Do 15-month-old toddlers need milk 3-4 times a night?

It figures that as I write this, my daughter is sleeping fairly well for her nap today (we magically made it over the one-hour-wake-up hump without me having to intervene!) and she slept fairly well last night. Her sleep is just so all-over-the-map that I wish I could bottle whatever it was that let her sleep 8 hour stretches and recreate it more often. As it is, it seems that we get a good 8 hour stretch about once or twice a month. And then, I am the one who wakes up at 2:30 am wondering where my nursing cub is.

Your daughter is older now–does she sleep though the night and did you continue nursing her at night for as long as she wanted? Dr. Sears suggests that babies still tend to wake up at night to nurse until sometimes between 2-4 years old. Zoiks! Sometimes I feel like I am nursing a gymnast and other times it’s like nursing a kitten (at least I only have one kitten!).

Thanks for any insight–
~Jennifer

Turns out I have written a lot about sleep over the years. Sadly, I am no expert. Reading back through my posts, what I can tell you is that I mainly kept up with the two night wakings until my daughter turned two, and then we began night-weaning. We had success off and on — if my daughter got sick I would gladly nurse her in the night to get that extra milk and antibodies into her. I also want to note that once children have night-weaned, they continue to wake occasionally for various reasons: to go to the bathroom, because they’ve wet the bed, because they’re sick, because they want someone to comfort them back to sleep, because they’ve had a bad dream or night terror or they’re sleep-walking.

As you can read in the co-sleeping section, our sleeping arrangements have changed over the years, and continue to do so. Right now, the 5-month-old sleeps with me while the 6- and 4-year-olds sleep with their dad. It works for us (and I should probably elaborate on that in another post)! Rather than have you wade through the archives, I have organized the articles on sleep. If you only have time for a few, read the starred articles.

My top tips in a nut shell:

- *** Don’t CIO.
- Talk to your child about the plan, no matter how young your child is. If the child is older, have him or her help come up with ideas (choosing a favorite toy to snuggle, picking a special sippy cup for water in the night).
- Change the bedtime routine to: nurse, brush teeth, jammies, stories, sing/rock/snuggle to sleep. Repeat the sing/rock/snuggle to sleep if the child wakes in the night.
- Have mom do the settling. Maybe it’s worked better for some to have dad do the bedtime routine and/or handle the night-wakings (and if you’re one of them, leave a comment! Some call this “Crying in Daddy’s Arms” or “Fathering Down”) but for me, my children felt more safe and loved and less abandoned by me if I did the comforting. I couldn’t bear to hear my child cry with her dad, and my husband did not appreciate when I’d rush in to “rescue” my child when he had been working so hard to settle her.
- Try using a particular song for settling your child, and then sing that same song again when your child wakes. Or use a tape player or “white noise” radio (very helpful if it has a sleep setting that will turn itself off).
- If it’s not working, then stop and wait another month or two. Be flexible and allow for nursing at night when the child is sick or teething.

Newborns:

~ My current experience with my 5-month-old in Sleep, Elusive Sleep
~ Moms of babies 12 months and younger can vent their frustrations by taking the researchers’ Infant Sleep Survey

Toddlers:

~ *** Starting the process of Getting Your Child to Sleep through the Night, written when my daughter had turned two
~ Celebrating 6.5 hours of sleep in Sleep, Glorious Sleep, when my daughter was two years one month old
~ a little humor to help see you through: “The Perils of Night-Nursing”
~ Toddler Swaddle, written when my daughter was two years two months
~ Progress report at two years three months old
~ *** My three steps to successful night-weaning without tears when my daughter was two years three months old.
~ Okay, I would still nurse her in the night if she were sick…. A short musing about my then 2.5-year-old waking two times a night to nurse
~ A brief bit of encouragement in “Let Me Reassure You,” written when my daughter was two years 11 months old.

Co-Sleeping:

~ SIDS, Breastfeeding, and Co-Sleeping
~ Poll Results about Breastfed Infants Sleeping in Cribs or Co-Sleeping with Their Parents
~ News debate about the relative danger/safety of co-sleeping
~ *** Advice on Weaning from Co-Sleeping without Crying-It-Out (Mom-to-Mom #9)
~ A brief history of my and others’ co-sleeping experience in Musical Beds and the Attachment Parenting and Breastfeeding Family
~ Study comments on how co-sleeping affects maternal mental health

Leave a Comment

What has your experience been with nursing and sleeping? When did you start night-weaning? When did your child start sleeping through the night (define that however you want, just let us know)? What are your tips? What worked or didn’t work?

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

Vote in the new poll in the side bar!

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

So I could monitor her throughout the night I co-slept with her until my own violent coughing threatened to wake her and I moved to the chaise by the bed. At one point in the night, my toddler turned on the light (it’s one of those that you touch it and it turns on), climbed out of bed and came over to me to nurse. I told her she could nurse and then she’d have to go back to bed and turn out the light. Lo and behold, she actually did it! When it was time to be done, she popped off, walked back to bed, climbed in, tapped the lamp until it turned off, snuggled under the covers and went back to sleep! It wasn’t just a fluke either because she did it again a few hours later. Those gentle sleep techniques must be having some effect if she can settle herself back to sleep without nursing in bed!

She was true to her promise and today she’s happy and eating normally. Now if I could just say the same about my husband….

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

Breastfeeding is the ultimate soother and it helped her drift off to sleep about 15 minutes ago. She hasn’t napped this early in at least a year. She must really need it, and I’m so glad that she settled peacefully and happily through nursing.

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

Once we arrived at our destination, breastfeeding helped my toddler cope with the new surroundings and unfamiliar faces. Everything was wonderfully stimulating for her. It could have been overwhelming, but she knew she could always retreat to the safety and security of a nursing session with me.

As we pulled up to the church for the funeral, my toddler fell asleep. She woke up when I carried her inside, but I was able to nurse her throughout the first part of the service and she eventually fell back asleep for the duration of the ceremony. The loudest noises that came from her were the sucking sounds she made in her sleep as she dreamed of nursing! Through my tears, I looked down at her and reflected on how Alice’s spirit would live on through her beautiful great-granddaughters.

Later on I got many compliments on how well-behaved and quiet my toddler was during the service. I basked in the compliments and didn’t reveal that it was the nursing that did it! Most people did not even realize we had been nursing. I’ve nursed in a lot of places over the years and now I can add a Quaker church in Iowa to the list.

My husband’s grandmother Alice was a wonderful person. Many of her loved ones shared fond memories of her and her loving and lively spirit. One woman recalled how Alice used to re-enact the story of when she was a child on her family farm and she climbed the silo and threw chickens off the top to see if they could fly! She’d imitate the sound of the chickens as they fell. They all survived the ordeal, except one that died of a heart attack on the way down. She had to confess to her parents what had happened to that chicken, and she never tried that experiment again!

Most people spoke of her love, her lively spirit and her determination. If I hadn’t had a toddler asleep in my arms (and if I didn’t have a tendency to cry to the point where I can’t speak), I would have told how Alice was such a generous woman, and how she always knew the right thing to say. When she saw me struggling to raise two young children, she praised them and told me that I was a good mother. Every mother needs to hear that once in a while. I took it as a particularly high compliment coming from Alice.

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3

The trick to do it is to pop her off gently. That way she’ll just think it’s in her dream.

It worked.

Post from: Breastfeeding 1-2-3