You're doing your part to fight breast cancer!

[marisa724]

In honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness month, I thought I'd take this opportunity to give everyone a pat on the back for doing their part to fight breast cancer. :)

Those of you who have nursed a baby or who are currently breastfeeding -- did you know that breastfeeding for just one year total (combined, all children) measurably decreases

Comments

[marisa724]

I think every kid is different, of course, but this is what finally worked for us. When Joey was about 18m old we got the toddler bed, but he wasn't very interested in it at all. I set it up in our room, about 3 feet away from our bed, and he would take naps there but still slept in our bed all night. Finally I think he got used to the idea, and I was able to talk to him about him going to sleep in his 'big boy bed', and moved away from nursing him to sleep in our bed. I would lay on my bed and he would lay on his, sometimes he'd want to talk to me, sometimes we'd have music on, and he'd eventually drift off to sleep by himself. Some nights it would take a while, and I'd listen to books or podcasts on my iPod or have the tv on softly -- out of his line of sight, of course.

I think that having a nighttime routine that was consistent every night helped a lot, and then like I said it was just after his second birthday that a light went off for him. He began going down easier, he began sleeping longer stretches. So then we started talking to him about moving the bed to his own room, and I think that by the time he was 2 1/2 he was spending most of the night in there (it's right next door to our room, and we had nightlights and a gate on the stairs so he wouldn't be in any danger if he got up at night and decided to walk in to find us -- which he wound up doing nearly every night).

A lot of people say that it's tough to get a child to change their habits, that you have to 'get them out of your bed early!' and stuff like that, but I actually found that a 'go with the flow' approach worked really well for us, that waiting until Joey became more verbal meant that we could actually talk to him about the changes and he could talk to us about his feelings too.

[lisainpink]

Thank you for taking the time to answer me. I have really been struggling with this as of late- and your input was beyond valuable.