Teaching a 5 week old to settle self to sleep

[Lorelai]

Can anyone help me find a way to get DD2 to settle to sleep by herself (if possible)? She is 5 weeks old, and has done it a few times, but more by 'accident' than anything else. Mainly she falls asleep feeding, sucking on my finger, or in the car/pram. DD1 was the same and still has issues going to sleep without someone with her at nearly 3 so I would like to do things differently. However I will not leave her to cry, and she won't take a dummy so not sure if there is another option. Any ideas?

She's 5 weeks old. It's too soon to be training her to get to sleep on her own, and it woun't work anyway! Don't worry about it, you can make changes when she's bigger.

How much bigger though? Don't want to leave it too late like I did before.

She's quite young so I wouldn't worry about it just yet.

Feeding to sleep is fine.

I dunno, 6 months? Chill out about it, really, you're going to make life hard for yourself trying to encourage good habits in a lawless 5 week old, and it ain't going to happen.

You've said that you're not prepared to let her cry, which I completely agree with, but really, if you want to train a baby, they are going to cry.
She's only just come out of your tummy where she was having all her needs met all the time, you need to carry on trying to do that to the best of your ability before worrying about anything else.

All babies are different, she may slip in to her own routine unlike your older dd, or she may be similar. You never know, but at this stage you aren't going to be able to change her rhythms without a fight.

Try reading a book called "No Cry Sleep Solution" - it has lots of ideas for getting into good sleep habits early on without leaving them to cry.

I don't think a 5 week old can self-settle though - maybe somewhere between 4-6 months you can start teaching that.