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[quote=Anonymous]Nursing to sleep is not "a crutch". It's totally fine. I nursed to sleep until my kid was 1. She's 4 now, and a great sleeper. She moved naturally from falling asleep while nursing to staying awake but drowsy before falling asleep on her own, to not nursing at all.

OP, to me the main problem you are having is that your DH is making a lot of demands based on his needs and they disagree with both what your baby seems to prefer and what you are instinctively gravitating towards. I understand your spouse has mental health concerns, but that does not entitle him to make these sorts of demands.

I think you need to have a conversation with him that accounts for everyone's needs (yours, his, AND the baby's) and come up with an approach that works for all of you. That will mean some compromising for both of you. You are obviously not going to do strict CIO because you are clearly not committed to that. But also cosleeping in the baby's room isn't working either if it means you don't sleep. Your baby is looking for extra comfort and assistance with sleep but also needs some help facilitating self-soothing and learning to fall asleep on his own. Come up with your own method that enables you to sleep, get time with your DH, and help your baby.

One thing we did during this phase was develop some rules about going in the baby's room at night. We always let her cry for 1-3 minutes to see if she'd fall back asleep. After that, we could go in but our first move was to comfort without picking her up -- offer pacifier, rub her back, etc. If that didn't work, we could pick up and rock. If that didn't work, I'd nurse. It took time (a few weeks) but eventually most wakeups could be handled without picking her up, and she'd reduced the number of overall wakeups. Within 6 weeks she was STTN. But well before that, our sleep greatly improved and we also relaxed a bit because we had clear gameplan and were both totally on board. No middle of the night arguments, no recriminations about who was right.[/quote]

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