self settling - when and how?

[nello]

Hi all,

I have a little 6 week old and people have started muttering the 'self settling' words at me, asking me if she is managing it yet.

TBH i haven't even tried, I cuddle and breastfeed her to sleep, espcially as she has only just agreed to sleep in her basinet and not in my arms all night and still won't nap in the daytime at all unless it is on me or in her moving buggy.

But I was wondering when I should start thinking about helping her self-settle, and how to go about this.

Thanks :)

totally agree! Tbh, I think people giving "helpful advice" shouldnt be allowed unless the parents ask for advice :)

One question about night sleeps though - my Ds almost always falls back to sleep at the end of a night feed, so how to avoid effectively feeding to sleep? I can easily separate meals and naps during the day, but feel like I'm undermining the messages I'm giving him by not doing the same at night. Any ideas?

Do you breast or bottle feed at bedtime? I bfeed during the day and ff at bedtime. If I see ds slowing down when he's feeding, I stop and sit him up to wind him. This is usually enough to wake him, as he's so hungry at bedtime that he gets annoyed when I stop. But if he's SO tired that stopping and sitting him up doesn't help then I lay him in his cot. It's basically all about stopping and laying him down before he's completely sound asleep. Very tired and almost asleep is ok - he's still learning to get fully asleep by himself

I bf day and night - I have a good stash of enmity in the freezer and have considered giving the bedtime feed from a bottle, but he still wakes to feed at least once during the night and tbh at 3am I'm glad of anything that will get him back to sleep! It's Catch 22 - I spend all day trying to break the feed/sleep connection and all night praying it still works! Otherwise its an hour of rocking and shh-ing. It's clearly the sucking he's addicted to rather than the food itself and for naps I can sometimes help him find his thumb, but no chance at nigh

Oops sorry, 'at night'.

Stupid phone.

A good stash of enmity? Good grief! I mean ebm. Must type better....

thanks for all the ideas. tbh at 6 weeks i'm n ot so bothered about self settling, but one of my concerns is that she wn't nap at all in the day, unless on me or in sling. do you think i should be encouraging her to take naps in her cot after being up for say 2 hours? if so, would you use self settling techniques to do this? she can go for a whole day with hardly sleeping which means she's exhausted by the evening and struggles to feed. or will she start doing this in her own time...does it get better withage? she just really finds it hard to sleep. thanks!

Mine didn't start napping in his cot til he was a few months old - but I do think they need daytime sleep. I would do one nap in my lap while I watched a movie, one nap out in the pram/sling, one nap I'd go to bed with him etc.

thanks rita...so would you encourage these naps even if she doesn't seem interested in sleeping, by rcking/cuddling in your lap fpr example? the sling nap would be fine as she falls to sleep on her own there but otherwise i sould make the desicion that she needs a nap?

Yeah if he seemed grumpy/tired/had been awake for a couple of hours I would feed him and he would usually fall asleep - if not I'd take him out for a walk. Basically any time he was grumpy I'd feed, change his nappy, or put him in the sling. One of those always worked.

Aiming for them to have a sleep whenever they've been awake 2 hours is a good pattern. Although 6 weeks is so small I wouldn't worry if it seems a bit irregular for now.

thanks...going to work on this, napping, anywhere at all, with my full support, lot of cuddles and feeding, and worry about self settling later! Good to know what i am evemtually working towarrds though, so thank you all v much :)

Agreed re daytime naps - in babies, sleep helps them sleep even more. Daytime naps are really important.

Note, my ds2, even at 18 weeks was getting sleepy at 60 or 70 mins, and if I waited for 2hrs to put him down for a nap, it was too late. So it's worth experimenting over a few days to see how long she can go between naps. And watch out for the first signs of tiredness, eg getting grumpy, yawning, rubbing eyes/ears etc. They all have a telltale sign of tiredness :)

and how long should a nap last?

Think it depends on the baby - anything over an hour is a good nap. From a couple of months old though my ds would only sleep 45 minutes at a time, so I'd try to have at least one nap a day where I could feed him back to sleep after the first 45 minutes. Then suddenly at 7 months he started napping for up to 2 hours at a time again - they like to keep you on your toes!

Yep , the first sleep cycle lasts 45 or 50 mins. Many babies therefore wake at 45 mins or so. The trick is to try to resettle them in the hope of the nap getting longer after a few days. 45 mins is long enough for some babies, but most will be a bit grumpy if this is all they sleep at a time. If they can sleep past the 45-50 min hump, then they'll be more refreshed. Ds2 sometimes has to be woken from his nap after 3 hrs...

mine always napped longer if i did just put my feet up and the tv on and let him have a feed and conk out for a bit. it meant i was forced to take a rest too which i wasn't so good at early on. i agree that he slept a lot better at night after a good few naps.

just to play devil's advocate again, ages of rocking and shhing sounds like a lot more effort than feeding to sleep! i can't get my head round what seems like a lot of effort, for something that they will most likely eventually learn anyway? can you ladies explain why you don't like just feeding to sleep - have you had a bad experience before? sorry I'm totally nosey!

i found it less stressful to try letting him settle once he started being awake after the last feed.

i also introduced a bedtime story before the last feed at about 7 months ish. then when i thought he might settle on his own (months later on when he was used to it) i just swapped so the story was last and read it to him in the cot. i do like minimum effort ideas i guess. :)

I stopped feeding to sleep because ds started waking every 45 minutes at night and needed to be fed back to sleep - or just stayed latched on all night. If I could have just fed him to sleep at bedtime and then he slept waking only for feeds it wouldn't have been a problem.

Once he was falling asleep without feeding he immediately slept much better, and if he did wake in the night just needed a quick pat or his dummy to get back off again. Meant he could go into his own room and DP could help with the night waking.

I stopped because ds wasnt always falling asleep after a feed, which in turn meant ages and ages and ages of rocking and ssshing, cos he couldn't drop off by himself.
It also meant that if we were out, even if ds had just had a feed, I'd still need to find a cafe so I could let him suck to sleep, or he'd just cry and cry. It was too much of a bind. So actually in our case, feeding to sleep became the difficult option. And I wanted him to be able to nap in his cot during the day, so it was easier to tackle it all at once instead of changing the rules one at a time.
And in our case, teaching him ti fall asleep on his own didn't take long. Now I sometimes still feed him to sleep, but he's not reliant on it now