My baby is 6 months old and he’s really fantastic. I know I’m very fortunate when it comes to his sleep. He’s been sleeping all night since 3.5 months. We get 9-11 hours/night. And for naps, his puts himself to sleep without issue. Learning to suck his thumb is what made that possible as he can self soothe. He sleeps in his crib in his own room.

But one thing I haven’t taken from him yet is nursing to sleep for nighttime sleep. Every night since he’s been born I’ve allowed him to have a marathon nursing session lasting up to 2 hours. Of course I know a good portion of this is comfort nursing. I let him fall asleep nursing, then we snuggle for a minute before I transfer him to his crib. He does usually wake up slightly during the transfer but is so drowsy he finds his thumb quickly and falls back asleep easily.

I know our next step is to change this habit so my husband and I can have an occasional date night, haha.

My concern isn’t that he won’t be able to fall asleep, since I know he can do that on his own. But I worry that if he doesn’t get that extremely long session to comfort nurse and turn into a zombie, that he won’t be able to sleep as long as he does at night.

We also really don’t have a sleep routine. For naps I just put him in his crib and leave. Sure there’s a bunch of kisses beforehand but there’s no lullaby’s or bedtime stories or anything. So it just feels unlikely that he’ll have success at night . The only routine we have at night is daddy putting on PJs.

Any ideas of suggestions? Or if I continue to let him do this, would he grow out of it naturally before he’s like 5?

My first attempt at a step 1 was tonight. I let him nurse as long as he wanted but with the nightlight on brighter so it wasn’t pitch black. He didn’t fall asleep on the boob as usually, probably because the room was light. Then I read a short story. I tried to keep it quiet and soothing so I was essentially whispering. He was happy and reaching for the book and smiling. Then I turned the nightlight off and tried to snuggle for a minute but he didn’t necessarily take to that so I just put him in his crib and left. As of now, he’s still awake but quiet.