Please Advise on Getting Baby Out of Our Room...

Added per your SWH:
He goes to bed before you and your husband, right? Put him in the middle of the bed and quietly stand outside the door until he falls asleep. If you aren't comfortable with that, you could go out and buy some guards for the side of the bed. That's what I did for my son's bed once he was out of the crib. You slide it under the mattress and then pull the guard part up. That way he won't fall out of the bed. The hard part is that he will want you to get in bed with him. If he won't go down without you, sit on a chair beside him quietly with the light off but turn away from him. Don't talk. Don't hold him or pick him up. If he gets out of your bed and tries to climb on you, put him back without talking to him. This will prepare him for sleeping by himself. Hope this helps.

Original:
I would first start by night weaning him. He does not need to nurse at night anymore. The way to do it is to turn away from him and let him cry about it. Just pretend that you are asleep and do not give in. He will cry and claw at your nightgown. Ignore him and stay steadfast, no matter how angry at you he gets. Because you have created this problem, he won't just stop demanding it if you don't stop allowing it.

Don't let him fall asleep nursing before nap or before getting in the bed anymore. Make sure that you are sitting up nursing him from now on, and not laying in the bed nursing. He must get used to being awake when you put him in the bed with you and not associate the bed with nursing anymore.

After you have accomplished all of this, with him going to sleep awake, and with no more night nursing, then put his crib mattress on the floor beside of you and tell him to sleep there. You will just have to be firm about it. Maybe you can reach down to him and touch him until he gets used to it.

In a few weeks after you have accomplished him being willing to accept this, start moving the mattress away from your bed closer to the door. At some point, talk to him about his big boy room. Get him to help you redecorate. That will help him become invested in sleeping in his room.

After all of this, then you get him to nap in there. Lastly, you get him to sleep in there. When he comes to you in the middle of the night, you get up over and over and lead him back and put him back in his bed. You might have to do it 40 times in a row. It will be awful. But eventually he will understand that you don't mean maybe and he will finally give in.

I would expect that this will take you about 2 months. Don't let it go on longer than that, truly.

Good luck,
Dawn

Dawn nailed it as usual :) also, i would go to supernanny.com for some really good tips.

in the end it comes down to, you choose, or they choose. if they choose it will never stop. your three year old really is not ever going to "decide" she wants another bed. you have to make that decision. you can "talk her into it", get her excited about it, make it fun for her, but really, it's your decision, not hers.

you can let them make the decisions, or you can be the parent. it will take some work and some stamina. parenting isn't for sissies :)

your phrase "we have just been too wimpy to make the changes".....
says it all. You are ready for a different way of living, one of your choice.

Everything that Dawn said was dead-on perfect. & will take time & perseverance.

Adansmama also made a good point concerning your daughter's bed. Make it an event, allow her input over the choices.... but make sure it's input & not the final say. The easiest way to achieve that is by offering 2 choices which are compliant with your mindframe, thereby limiting her battleground. Never, ever offer a child a definitive question with only a "yes/no" answer possible!

Parenting can be challenging, & your situation is "why" I recommend not enjoying the pleasures/ease of co-sleeping. At some point, that pleasure ends & a crisis begins. I wish you Peace thru these transitions.

I've had this problem with both my girls. CIO helped. So did weaning. Good luck.

I am so sorry to tell you this, but this will not be easy. No matter how you do it, there will be tears.
SO, in order to make the process quicker and over with sooner, I am going to suggest cry it out (CIO). You will have to be strong, and I'm sorry for that.

First you have to stop associating nursing with sleep. How I did this for my daughter was during the nursing session I started counting down in a nice quiet slow count from 10 and at 0 I stopped nursing. Every few days I stopped nursing sooner, so that by a month I was not nursing at all and just counting down. As I counted down I held her and did circles on her forehead with my finger so I was replacing the nursing with a nice soft touch. Do this before naps and bed and you could be down to no nursing before sleep as early as 10 days depending on how he reacts.
If you want to continue nursing then make sure you are offering it as soon as he is awake so he gets it as a waking up thing instead.

For those days where you are switching from nursing to sleep to just holding to sleep I would not change where the sleep takes place. But once you get that taken care of I would go cold turkey and put him into a crib or pack and play in his room. I would just put him in there, say whatever bedtime things you say to your older daughter and walk out. Shut the door. He will cry and wail. He may do it for the whole 2 hours. DO NOT GO IN TO GET HIM OR CHECK ON HIM. If you do you will just set yourself back to day 1. If you do this for both naps and night time he will cry for maybe 3 days, probably only 2. It will be hard. I suggest you put on headphones and sleep in the farthest part of the house those nights. Tell your daughter what is going on, she is old enough to understand, and tell hubby that it will be crying and it has to be this way.

It will be hard, he will just scream the first few times, but do not go in until 2 hours are up.

You've already been given some sound suggestions which could very well work for you. Every family has its own pace and style for this sort of thing. Here's how I handled a similar problem.

I was a co-sleeping mom. There are so many resources out there about how to get it going, but none about how to stop. And we're not the "cry it out" type of family. So here's how I got my kids out of my bed, and it did work.

I put the child who needed to be out of my bed on a futon next to my bed to sleep. I'd lie down with him for a few minutes, nurse a little. Then I'd get into my bed and lay a hand on the child. I did not let him back into my bed for anything. If he cried for me, I'd soothe from my own space, and leave him in his. If he was absolutely distraught or needing to nurse, I'd get down on the futon with him. I did not want him to continue to associate my bed with his nursing/comfort - I was ready to have my bed back for me. (At the same time, we were weaning from night nursing.)

After a few weeks, when he was more used to the idea that he slept in his own space, the futon moved to the foot of my bed. After a little more time the futon moved across the room. Then the futon moved into the hallway. Finally, the futon went on the floor in the boy's own room.

I know this process may be too slow for many moms out there, but it worked well for us. A little time, a little patience, slow changes, no tears.

A few things that helped me were having a twin bed in my son's room (mattress only, no box spring) and we nursed to sleep in there. If I fell asleep, at least I had room. Then I had a babysitter that came during the day when I had my own business, and she put him down for his nap - made weaning off the nap/nurse MUCH easier. And I could also let him know that I was running out of milk because he was getting older. We didn't wean completely till 2.5, but gradual weaning happened about 1.5 and on, one feeding at a time. Good luck!

We used the Ferber method. It worked for us. Sounds like you want to curb a number of sleep associations, night time nursing to sleep, sleeping in your bed, being held by you to go to sleep. You can address these seriatum, or all at once.

It will take 3-7 days to get it done, but once you've won this, it will be done and behind you.

good luck to you and yours,
F. B.