How do you get your baby to sleep?

[TheDudess]

DC is three months old and until very recently we had a great little routine going where I would take her up about 10pm, breast feed to sleep and then pop her in her moses basket. Easy peasy.

This past week though she has wanted to go to bed earlier (I think anyway) so I have started bringing her up once she has got a bit grizzly and tried to feed her to sleep like before.

It's not really working though.

She does seem to be more tired in the evenings and isn't particularly cluster feeding. She just wont fall asleep feeding like she used to sob

So how do i get her to sleep? She is currently wide awake in her basket with a dummy and her cuddly toy (which will be removed once she's asleep). Seems happy enough but not asleep. Tried singing and rocking to calm her down when she was crying but now she's fine.

Should I give up and go back to our previous routine or stick with it? I thought I was responding to her sleepy cues but I guess not.

I have no idea, tell me what to do MN!

When boob stopped working I did singing the same song repeatedly with rocking in my arms quite vigorously. He may have been a little older though.

I just put DS in his crib, whether he's asleep or awake and walk away.

I only go back up to attend to him if he cries. For all I know he could lie there awake for ages before he goes to sleep

We had a horrible transition when if you boobed to sleep you couldn't mover her to the crib later without waking. Happened for us around 5 months. One helpful thing was to catch her correct bedtime which was half seven on the dot....15 minutes later was a nightmare. We read her stories and picked her up when she cried and put her down when she was quiet and got back to the story. This went like a dream until she could pull herself up in her cot - now she is impossible to get down.

I think my DD stopped feeding to sleep around 3 months too (she's now 4 months). She also started demanding earlier bedtime, so it all sounds pretty similar.

Now: we do a fairly strict routine every evening around 6pm (bath, feed, massage, same three stories every night, into grobag, feed, into cosleeper with same music on). She gets it and will fall asleep fairly soon afterwards but she needs to be sucking something - her thumb if she finds it, a dummy if she'll take it, or my little finger if neither of those.

I'm a bit of a pansy and can't bear to leave if she's still awake (even happy) so no idea if she would self settle without me there!

I did the same as voodoochimp - I never fed/rocked or cuddled to sleep - DS went in his cot at 7pm and I left the room . Never had any sleep problems from the day we got home from hospital.

It never dawned on me that DS wouldn't self settle - fortunately I didn't use Mumsnet in those days .

Very interesting, thank you! I would love to hear some more examples of anyone has some. I think I need to get better at picking up on sleep cues but I'm finding it quite hard!

TheDudess have you ever tried leaving her in her basket with dummy and toy and seeing if she'll go off to sleep by herself? I know this is what I 'should' be doing with my DD but tbh I would rather sit beside her and stroke her head until she's out.