Transitioning to crib and weaning

Hi! I‘m in the exactly same boat! A lot of night wakings and comforting 🙈But I don‘t think that sleep training is the right method for us. I‘m following raisedgood and happycosleeper on instagram. I just bought the night weaning workshop from happycosleeper which is a more holistic and gentle approach. Sorry I can‘t tell you yet how it went!

We didn’t co sleep, but I did/ do nurse my baby to sleep. He nurses and then I put him down in his crib and he generally falls asleep by himself and sleeps all night. I say this just to show where we are- we got there step by step. First we worked on naps in the crib, and then we did overnights once naps were easy. To night wean, we just went cold turkey one night and my husband went in instead of me to comfort him - it took a few days of him yelling at dad for a bit, but then he realized no more night milk, and he just stopped waking up for it because his body didn’t expect it. He is a thumb sucker though, so I think that or having a pacifier is helpful to night wean. I would look more into possible effects of the Ferber method- it would be quite a huge difference for your babe to go from co sleeping straight to Ferber.

Many of the more “gentle” approaches involve helping your baby to sleep by using gradually less hands on methods - eg right now you’re at the max of nursing to sleep and sleeping together all night. A step down (if you don’t already do this) would be to work on solo naps in the crib/ floor bed. I started out by laying next to my son to get him to fall asleep. And if he woke and cried I always went to him, but I stopped letting him comfort nurse back to sleep. Then rather than laying next to or picking up to comfort, you can just sit next to/ lay next to crib and put your hand on them/ stroke their head. These are just examples, but the goal is to gradually transition from the most support to less and less as they learn both trust that you will come/ be there when they need, and also how to put themselves to sleep