Getting 12 week old to sleep at bedtime the no cry way!

[dycey]

my second dc - but with the first I had given him a dummy by this age and so he'd go to sleep on his own in his own time.... With this baby I am nit doing the funny thing - caused sleep mayhem last time - but I don't like hearing her cry and she sleeps next door to my son.

At the moment I breastfeed her in the dark but it is taking Forever - an hour and when I take her off she wakes up! Then I tend to need to come back into the living room to cook / eat / attend to my toddler who has been watching peppa pig while I tried to get her to sleep..... Then half ab hour later she is tired again and it starts over. Generally she is going down at nine ish. Having slept on the boob at six seven an eight for a while.......

Is this cluster feeding???

During the day I use a sling or white noise while rocking the pushchair. If she falls asleep feeding she tends to wake when I take her off. Basically I can't feed her to sleep and don't know how to get her to go to bed!!! Have tried letting her cry for a while but she didn't stop quickly enough for my nerves!

Any ideas anyone???

Keep her up with you instead of trying to put her to bed at 6. It won't make a difference, but it will be much less inconvenient.

My DS wasn't going to sleep sleep till about 11pm until he was 24 weeks old. Then it just started getting earlier and earlier without me doing anything different.

I think you're better off doing your DCs the other way round - keep her in a sling on you while you sort out DS and put him to bed. Then you've got all the time and mental space you need to feed your DD as many times as she wants (my DS was having a feed every 20 minutes all evening at 12 weeks) without stressing about your other child in the next room waiting for you to finish so you can attend to him.

You may even find that the baby's been picking up on your silent 'hurry-up-and-SLEEP!' signals and settles much better and more quickly when you don't desperately need her to. 9pm is about normal for a 12 week old to settle for the night. When feeding to sleep you need to wait at least five minutes after she's gone to sleep before you try and take her off - basically as long as she's still doing the odd 'sucking' motion every minute or so she's likely to wake when you put her down. Once she's gone floppy you're away!

Thanks so much. Excellent advice. Was a bit worried she wasn't getting enough sleep as her naps are only 45 mins in the pushchair but can be longer in the sling.

Tried it tonight and it was much easier.

Do they get quicker at feeding to sleep?

What I meant about the naps is that is why I have tried getting her off to bed earlier - so her night is long enough... Sorry sounding so muddled.

My DD got a lot quicker at feeding to sleep, and also after about 5 months would often accept being put down just slightly awake.

I wouldn't count the hours she's asleep - babies differ radically in how much sleep they need on a daily basis (even now my 2.7 DD will sometimes sleep for 1 hour in the afternoon and sometimes 3!) 45 minutes is about one sleep cycle. At 12 weeks DS was awake for 90 minutes, asleep for 45 - once I'd cottoned on to his natural rhythm I got much better at putting him down when he wanted to go!

dycey I don't have anything useful to add except sympathy - I have a 12 wk old DD and I honestly could have written your message myself! Octavia, great advice :)

Ah that's reassuring! My first baby would fall asleep soundly at 6 or 7pm from about three weeks old. But I think that was unusual.. This baby at least sleeps on a bit in the morning. Just wondering when I might get ny evenings back!!!