How on earth do you get a baby to self soothe?!

[allyf92]

Baby is almost 5 months and so far has been falling asleep on the boob or in the rocker.

We want him to start to learn to self soothe and are trying to put him down while drowsy and going up to shush him and stroke his head (not picking up) after a few minutes of grizzling/crying.

He just seems to go from drowsy to increasingly worked up and awake! How do we get past this stage to him being able to self settle and fall asleep on his own?

i think (I hope) they just learn it on their own. dd (two next week) used to be able to do it - and as far as i'm aware just did it. nothing we taught her...

she seems to have forgotten this though. so wakes up in the middle of the night wide awake and screaming. its killing us

Second that one, they just learn it by themselves. Some will do it by one, some by two or two and a half. Of all my non-sleep training friends babies went to sleep by themselves between 18 months to two and a half years - all totally normal.

Whenever I worried about feeding to sleep I thought to myself well humans have done this for thousands of years and you know what we're all still here.

I really like Sarah Ockwell Smith and she explains it much better than me!

www.instagram.com/p/CRgiYx9sM0s/?utm_medium=copy_link

Sleep is developmental and occurs in its own time, like walking and talking and eating solids. You can’t try to fight it but it’s bad for your baby and bad for you.

You wait for him to develop enough in order to be able to.

Before they can self-regulate, they have to co-regulate with you. This is how they learn. There's a podcast called Parenting After Trauma by Robyn Gobbel that gives incredibly detailed but easy to understand information into how children develop.

I introduced a bunched up shawl to cuddle (instead of my breast) while patting him to sleep in his cot. Worked with both mine but only after a feed, never instead of. Good luck.

Apparently only about 15-20% of babies can do this at this age despite what a lot of the baby sleep gurus say!

They get there in the end don't worry. None of mine gave ever been in the magical 20% though.

I fed mine to sleep or walked in the pram until 8 months when she started going down for naps. Even then, id have to wait until she was fully asleep before leaving the room. Now at 11 months, she's able to self settle from going down fully awake. This would have seemed unimaginable at your baby's age so hang in there. Self soothing is developmental. I'd advise to accept things as they are and try again in a few weeks. If it doesn't work still, try again in a few weeks and so on. I found accepting my dd's sleep as biologically normal far less stressful. Xx

You wait until they are much older.

They just learn to, it’s not really something you can ‘teach’, it’s more a case of giving them the opportunity to figure it out themselves, so by putting them down awake and then deciding what to you feel comfortable doing next- shushing/patting them, waiting silently in the room with them, leaving them alone for a few minutes before going back, etc.
Sleep training is fine to start trying at 5-6 months old although I see a few people here confidently saying ‘you have to wait until they are older’. Not the case at all, every baby is different, some babies respond well to being encouraged to self soothe (mine did at 5 months) and some don’t until they are older.
I think the general suggestion with sleep training is if it’s not working after a week, then baby isn’t ready so leave it and try again at a later date. If you’ve been trying this for a while and baby isn’t happy with it then I’d put it on hold for now, you will know when they’re ready.

Agree with everyone else. It’s not something to be taught - it’s something that develops. DS started intermittently doing it at nap time at about 10 months. Prior to this he was breastfed to sleep for all naps and nights. Otherwise he’d just work himself up into a frenzy. He still needs a hand on his tummy to fall asleep now at night and quite often he won’t settle for anything but a breastfeed if he wakes overnight (14 mo).

Thanks everyone, it seems pretty unanimous that we may be expecting too much of both him and ourselves. We're very aware that we don't want to get into bad sleep habits that he has to unlearn, and the 'professionals' refer to 5 months as the point at which to encourage self soothing and independent falling asleep but frankly I agree with you all. It's very nerve wracking not wanting to make the wrong decision! It probably makes a difference as well that he was born a month early, so he's clearly not ready just yet.

I think we'll probably carry on feeding/cuddling to sleep - however where we've been leaving him in his rocker, I think we'll try to keep transferring him to his cot. He wakes up very quickly from this though - within 5 minutes max! Is this usual?

Dummy 😀

The whole drowsy but awake thing never worked for my first. They fell asleep on the boob til I stopped breastfeeding around 1yr and were fine after that. Only napped after a feed or in the car/buggy. Never any issues sleeping through the night though and are one of the best sleepers amongst children I know now they are 3. I think the whole self-settling thing is overrated, if you can quickly feed them to sleep then why not?!

Oh totally agree with this last post! Why make your life more difficult 😉

The idea of them getting into 'bad habits' is pervasive isn't it? But honestly if something is working for you all now there's really no need to change it in the vague hope.it will make things easier down the line.

We fed to sleep and coslept and contact napped and when DD was your baby's age there was a whole complicated combination or rocking, bouncing patting and singing that was required for any sleep. And now shes nearly one and she just needs a cuddle and a hand on the chest in the cot for a few seconds and then she drifts off herself. I didn't really do anything she was just ready, and none of our previous 'bad habits' seem to have done her any harm.

@allyf92

Baby is almost 5 months and so far has been falling asleep on the boob or in the rocker.

We want him to start to learn to self soothe and are trying to put him down while drowsy and going up to shush him and stroke his head (not picking up) after a few minutes of grizzling/crying.

He just seems to go from drowsy to increasingly worked up and awake! How do we get past this stage to him being able to self settle and fall asleep on his own?

They learn themselves, my daughter miraculously has started self soothing and she's 5 months. I never imagined that she would as she was such a difficult baby to begin with.

It will happen

You just never know when they’ll be able to do it. My eldest self soothed from day one, honestly. I fed him, popped him in his Moses basket and that was it. Slept through at 12 weeks.

Youngest, erm, nope! Self soothing was an alien concept. Took a lot of work using the Baby Whisperers pick up put down method to get him to self soothe and sleep at about 7 months.

You just don’t do it, they do it in their own time. I don’t believe in bad habits, fed or rocked all my kids to sleep til they were about 16 months. Now all sleep beautifully.
Forcing him to self soothe (he won’t) will just cause you and him enormous stress