<\/p>
When my sons were born, I have to admit I would have done just about anything to get them to sleep. Nursing was usually the only way I could get them to sleep. I usually feel asleep right along with them, right there in the nursing chair. This is, of course, not recommended!<\/p>
Here’s what our “resident” Mommy MD Guide, Rallie McAllister, MD, MPH, a mom of three, family physician, and coauthor of The Mommy MD Guide to Getting Your Baby to Sleep shares about her own experience nursing her babies to sleep:<\/p>
I loved nursing each of my babies. I had my middle son when I was in my second year of medical residency. When I came home from a long day of working at the hospital, I couldn’t wait to scoop up my baby and nurse him. It was our special snuggling and bonding time. I wanted to hold him as long as I could before bedtime, because I knew I’d have to get up early for work the next day.<\/p>
I made the serious mistake of allowing my son to nurse until he fell asleep most evenings. Sometimes I dozed off right along with him.<\/p>
Before I knew it, I had created a demanding little monster. My son wouldn’t even think about going to sleep at night unless he was in my arms and nursing. He might be sound asleep, but whenever I tried to remove him from my breast and put him in his crib for the night, he would instantly be wide awake and start to wail. It wasn’t his fault; I had inadvertently conditioned him to associate nursing with falling asleep.<\/p>
It took a long time and a lot of crying and missed sleep to reverse this pattern, but it was a very good lesson for me. When my youngest son was born, I was completing my final year of residency. I still cuddled and nursed him when I came home from work in the evenings, but I made sure that we both stayed awake.<\/p>
As soon as my son had his fill, I ended his nursing session and put him in his crib to go to sleep. We still got to snuggle and bond, and we both slept better!<\/p>
Sleepless? Order The Mommy MD Guide to Getting Your Baby to Sleep here https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Mommy-Guide-Getting-Your-Sleep\/dp\/098448048X\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479156924&sr=8-1&keywords=mommy+md+guide<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 When my sons were born, I have to admit I would have done just about anything to get them to sleep. Nursing was usually the only way I could get them to sleep. I usually feel asleep right along with them, right there in the nursing chair. This is, of course, not recommended! Here\u2019s Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1048,"featured_media":13214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"enable_toc":false,"care_reviewed_by":0,"care_post_updated_flag":false,"care_updated_date":"","last_update":"2021-05-19","view_count":2518,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"member-type":[4],"vertical":[6,13],"platform":[2],"class_list":["post-2340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","member-type-all","vertical-children","vertical-kids-health-safety","platform-resources"],"acf":[],"created":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"member-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/member-type?post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=2340"},{"taxonomy":"platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.care.com\/c\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/platform?post=2340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}