sleep cycles of a 5 month old

[saranga]

My boy is coming out of the 4 month regression so I am working to get him in the cot.
Hpw long will it take him to go into deep sleep from when he falls asleep? Ie when is the optimum time to transfer him after he's asleep.
I know when he was newborn we transferred him after 15/20 minutes and that worked, but will that have changed now?

Sorry if this isn't clear, I haven't slept for a loooonng time.

[HollyC255552]

Following

[FATEdestiny]

I think they say 20 minutes after falling asleep baby should be in a deep sleep.

The best option though would be to teach baby to go to sleep in the cot, so that transferring does not even come into the equation. Transferring a sleeping baby into the cot just creates other problems during night time wake ups because baby is not used to being asleep in the cot.

[saranga]

Fate - that is the evantual aim but not something I can cope with starting at the moment. So my aim now is to get him to sleep in the cot after transfer.

Have you any guidance for how to get him to sleep in the cot, considering I bf him to sleep and when he wakes he's really awake? Do I put him down and just talk/Pat him till he falls asleep? How do I know if he gets hungry and is crying for food not for tiredness ?

[FATEdestiny]

How about trying a bedside cot?

You can take the side of most full sized cots quite easily using an allen key. Then wedge it to the side of your bed, mattress same height. A rolled up towel or similar makes a simple barrier to divide the space, while being easy to lean over.

One of my 3 BF children likes to BF lying down and I used to lean right into his cot to feed him, extract myself back into my bed when done leaving baby in his own cot next to me. In fact I sort of spent much of the first 3 or 4 months half in my bed and half in the cot. Plenty of space to do this in a full sized cot.

With my other two BF babies, they were both swaddled for the first few months. Swaddling makes movement much easier. They also got used to be handled while sleeping - breastfeeding hold, move to my shoulder for burping, move into cot - all done in swaddle to maintain that secure feeling. By the time they grew out of the swaddle, they were used to being put down to sleep anyway.

Bedside cot also means I could cuddle into the cot and reinsert dummy (dummy is key to independent sleeping IMO) to resettle baby without feeding - which aided teaching my children to sleep through without a feed.

How do I know if he gets hungry and is crying for food not for tiredness ?

Dummy. Dummy is key for settling to sleep. I have a 5 and 30 minute rule.

At every wake up I will give the dummy (and cuddle into the bedside cot) to resettle back to sleep without needing to pick baby up. If baby was not back to sleep within 5 minutes, I would use that as a pointer that I needed to feed baby. I would say 80% of wake ups didn't need a feed though. Most times baby would go back to sleep with the dummy and a mummy cuddle in the cot.

Then the 30 minute rule was a follow on from above, If baby did go back to sleep within 5 minutes of waking, so wasn't fed. If baby then woke again within half an hour of last waking, I then wouldn't bother with the 5 minute rule I would just use the 30 minute rule - that I would always feed if baby woke within 30 minutes of last waking.

[saranga]

That's good for thought, thank you.