A question about letting your baby cry....sorry, long post
my dd is just coming up to 4 weeks old. We've been loosely using the "Baby Whisperer" techniques, ie Eat, Activity, Sleep. She's a good feeder, takes 4oz every three hours (formula)
It works well all day, though when we go on a trip out, she tends to sleep throughout, so sometimes gets more sleep during the day than she probably needs.
She has no problem being in her moses basket during the night. Strangely, so won't nap in it during the day. She doesn't seem to want the activity after night feeds. We dream feed her about 11pm and we go to her as soon as she stirs during the night (about 3am). She tends to feed very well and go straight back to sleep. We are up for about 30 mins on average.
We have a bit of a problem getting her down in the evening however. Our routine is generally food, activity, bath every other night, cuddle, bedtime. We put her down sometime around 7pm. She simply cries and cries when we put her down for this particular sleep. We know she's fed, clean, cuddled, not too warm or hot. She doesn't want the dummy, doesn't want more cuddles, will take more bottle (which we give as a last resort - she's putting on good amounts of weight) but immediately falls asleep on it. We've tried a musical mobile, we've tried a bit of lavender oil on a comforter at the foot of her basket.We've tried winding her more, but wind doesn't seem to be the problem (has wind at other times - obvious tummy discomfort - we are using infacol and colief). She looks knackered but can't be placated. I really don't think it's colic. DH is a doctor, he agrees.
We have concluded that she wants to go to sleep but doesn't know how to. We don't want to get into rocking her to sleep (and anyway, I tried it, it doesn't stop her on-off crying). We have started coming downstairs and sitting down, with the monitor on. The first night she cried for 15 mins on and off, nothing frantic, then she slept.
Last night, however, she cried for 30 mins. The crying escalated, unlike the previous night. She kicked off all her covers, I replaced them. My dh thinks we are doing the right thing. After all, if you try everything and nothing works, what else can you do? However, as her mum, I find the crying hard to ignore. I don't want to get her into bad habits, I don't want her to rely on us to get her to sleep every night (doesn't need it at other times). I'm concerned I won't have the will power not to pick her up when dh is working nights, he'll be gone when she goes to bed.
Would you let her cry and hope she learns how to get to sleep? 4 weeks seems very early, I know they don't really learn at this stage, so I'm not suggesting controlled crying, just at a loss what else to do.