how long do you wait before going to your baby at night?

[ObiWanKenobi]

My 5 month old tends to wake around 5am. I wake at the first noise and go in quickly, feed for a bit then put her in her cot when asleep.

I know I should encourage self-soothing but when I wait a bit DD just starts to get upset. I'd appreciate advice on the best way to handle this.

Advice? Thanks.

If this is the only time she wakes then I would also go in and feed and be v happy that this is only disturbance of the night!!

I did the same as you and DS seems to have learned self-soothing by himself. I found it much easier to just get up and settle him with a quick feed then back to bed to crash out.

I am pants at listening to him cry even at 18 months but he sometimes wakes in the night and sounds like he's away to start crying, then goes back to sleep himself.

so i have eventually got the hang of waiting a wee minute I can tell when he's really upset now.

He can also go to sleep by himself without any training so i guess it's not compulsory. I used to do his bf after a story so he'd end up getting cuddled to sleep. I changed the order to milk then story while he lies patiently jumps about in his cot and so far he goes to sleep fine almost every night.

I didn't start waiting a bit till i had actually observed him going back to sleep himself a few times IYSWIM. I was so bleary eyed on occasion that by the time i had started hauling myself out of bed, he'd gone all quiet and I realised he was just having a wee shout at something.

In case you didn't guess I don't really like the idea that babies have to be trained to self-settle, but I guess it doesn't work the same way for all babies.

good luck :)

My DS has a habit of babbling when he wakes, so i tend to wait until he gets whingey before going to him as sometimes he'll just talk himself back to sleep, which is very cute. I don't tend to wait for a full on cry (which DS rarely does anyway) but go to him when i think he's gearing up to cry. And now (19 weeks) i try giving him a comforter to see if he's actually whinging out of hunger or habit. Sometimes he snuggles the comforter and goes back to sleep, but more often than not i'll feed him and he settles again.

my ds is 11 months and we usually give him 5 minutes, although it totally depends if I know he is teething or sick i go in straight away sometimes i am too tired and just go in and settle him.

If we do wait 5 minutes, Sometimes he stops crying in about 3 minutes sometimes not. We only started doing this when he was 6 months old though and was sleeping through the night with no feed. Prior to that I would always go in and feed him.

I guess this isn't really an answer! sorry.

If they're crying, they're not learning to self-soothe at all! TBH if that's the only time your LO wakes up, she's probably self-soothing at night without you even noticing. Babies tend to have very light sleep stages so half wake up every 45-90min.

Thanks everyone. I feel more confident I'm doing the right thing now.