comfort nursing

im pretty sure my 3.5month old DD is becoming a comfort nurser. she is BF and FF normally. at night for the last few weeks she'll nurse right before bed, but only for 5 minutes or so before she gets sleepy and I put her in the rock n play. she's been sleeping from about 12am to 7am give or take a a half hour. then she'll eat most of her feeding at 7 and sleep another hour to two before getting up for the day. she only catnaps during the day unless we are in the car for a while.

she doesnt always sleep 12-7, sometimes she'll wake up 3-4 hours in. when this happens i'll nurse her and most of the time she'll fall back to sleep pretty quickly.

i love nursing and i love how she needs me but im worried about this starting a bad habit and that she won't be able to soothe herself at night (esp in the middle of the night) without nursing. also she's stayed at MILs overnight twice and seemed to be OK but it was before the comfort nursing thing became a habit. she was a preemie so her adjusted age is about 8w. am i overthinking this? is there any benefit/harm to comfort nursing?

TIA.

Message edited 8/29/2011 5:27:05 PM.

Re: comfort nursing

She's still so young!

In my opinion, she may not know HOW to soothe herself back to sleep at that age.

Loey used to comfort nurse 8+ times/night! Now THAT's BAD (we coslept though, so I promise it wasn't as bad as it sounded).

When he got to 6 months old, I noticed that he started to do a little more "manipulation" and I say that in the nicest way possible... but I mean things like whining just to get our attention, etc. so we felt he was ready to do CIO. When we did it, we went from cosleeping with comfort nursing 8+ times/night to STTN in his own crib! When they are ready, they are ready! KWIM?

I think she's still so young that bad habits aren't really formed yet. She might just need that soothing and comforting to be able to fall back asleep. Are you using a pacifier? If you are, you might be able to sneak the pacifier instead.

Re: comfort nursing

Posted by maybeamommy

She's still so young!

In my opinion, she may not know HOW to soothe herself back to sleep at that age.

Loey used to comfort nurse 8+ times/night! Now THAT's BAD (we coslept though, so I promise it wasn't as bad as it sounded).

When he got to 6 months old, I noticed that he started to do a little more "manipulation" and I say that in the nicest way possible... but I mean things like whining just to get our attention, etc. so we felt he was ready to do CIO. When we did it, we went from cosleeping with comfort nursing 8+ times/night to STTN in his own crib! When they are ready, they are ready! KWIM?

I think she's still so young that bad habits aren't really formed yet. She might just need that soothing and comforting to be able to fall back asleep. Are you using a pacifier? If you are, you might be able to sneak the pacifier instead.

Re: comfort nursing

Good luck! I hope it works. Not sure if you have Soothies but Loey would take the Soothie pacifier if I stuck my finger in the middle part and kind of wiggled it around haha

Maybe I'm just a mush of a mommy, but I never wanted to hear him cry at that age (I mean, of course I still don't now but I don't want to make him a bratty toddler) so I always tended to his EVERY need right away until he was about 6 or so months old. He's an awesome little guy now! He's not clingy, but very loving and also very independent so I can promise that I didn't create a monster in doing what I did!