Tips to get a 12 week old to sleep

[rosierosa]

My 12 week old is soooooooooooo difficult to get to sleep. I've started rocking her in the pram to get her off in the day, which can take 40 mins and at night it can take 3 hours.. I feed her to sleep, she wakes up, i swaddle her, she gets out of it, i try shhh patting and rocking the moses basket and nothing really works... it's exhausting.. is this 'normal'. my best friends child goes in the moses basket and send herself to sleep...

help! x

when you feed her to sleep how long are you waiting before transfer into basket? ime it takes ages till they're asleep enough.

If it helps, at 12wks my ds was like yours, now at 15 wks I feed him till pretty much asleep, put him in basket, he opens his eyes, looks round checks I'm still there then goes back to sleep.

This happened after at about 13 wks I got completely fed up of him waking up when i put him down after feeding to sleep so did a kind of pu/pd on him. I fed him to v dozy, put him in basket, and then when he (inevitably) cried I picked up, swayed, cuddled and sang till he stopped crying. Put down and repeat. He did end up falling asleep while I cuddled and swayed, but was happy to be put down then. We did that for a few nights and it has completely transformed his sleep. He will now even on occassion, self settle!

Cosmosis, your post gives me hope! Am knackered from rocking DS to sleep for every nap and night waking. Might try that soon as he's moving into his cot soon ...

Keep at it count he will get there in the end :) DS still wakes a lot in the night, last night was a good night, he did 8-12.30, then 3, 4, 5.30 and 6.30, but it's no longer killing me as I just plonk him back in and he doesn't wake again.

Rosie, do you have one of those miracle swaddling blankets with the velcro? Or have you tried swaddling in a cot blanket folded in two? DS is v wiggly and a bit of a houdini with the swaddling but both of those work for him. Worth persevering with swaddling - since we started doing it again at 8 weeks it has drastically reduced the amount of time and palaver to get him off.

Have you tried white noise turned up quite loud while you rock or cuddle her? Also, I find with shh/pat the shh needs to be quite loud - like a tap on full blast. Again, we're having some success with shushing at the moment, which is a relief because I was getting royally peed off with all the rocking ...

Hello. No useful advice here but just wanted to let you know it's 'normal' in our house. My 12 week old DS is really difficult to get to sleep - even with lots of swaying, rocking and feeding he sometimes won't go down. I also have antenatal group friends who just put their baby down at 7 and they fall asleep by themselves. I find it almost as frustrating when people tell me that they just wait till their baby falls asleep later in the evening but for us our DS would just be crying with tiredness not contently nestling in our arms for hours.
Doesn't help that today I finally recieved from Amazon the no cry sleep solution which lots have recommended on here and it justs says that under 4 months babies fall asleep when they are tired and the only advice for this age group is not to make bad sleep associations! Wish I could even get to the point of making bad sleep associations now so I could wean him off them later....
Actually one thing that works for us sometimes is sucking my little finger which is better for my back than standing rocking for hours. Good luck and I'll be watching this with interest....

Have no advice except to say that every baby is different. Just because your friends' babies are easy sleepers doesn't mean you are doing anything wrong. I have 12wo dts, and assumed they would just feed to sleep as that's what ds1 always did. Well dt2 has refused to do so since 6wo and has to be held and rocked (altho will sometimes feed back to sleep after the first part of a nap). dt1 much prefers to feed to sleep.

But both need to be held and I need to persuade them to nap in a cot so I can look after ds1 (plus feeding one and rocking the other simultaneously is not possible) so will be watching this thread with interest.