Rocking to sleep, will this just be something he grows out of??? (or is that wishful thinking!!)

[waffles1]

My 6 month old has always needed to be rocked to sleep, for all daytime naps and when going to bed. To be honest it can be a bit of a pain but on the whole i don't mind too much as it usually only takes around 10 minutes.
However he is now starting to get pretty heavy and also, if anyone babysits for us it can be a problem as they don't always know how to put him down.
Does anyone have a similiar experience of this? Did your little one just grow out of this and eventaully not need to be rocked, or did you need to use sleep training in order to be able to just put them down in their cot?
Thanks :-)

Sorry, have not got any advice but am watching with interest as I could have written your post! Can anyone out there be more help?

I think that you'll eventually need to do some kind of sleep training.

My DD would only go to sleep either in the pram, on a walk, or being fed to sleep at night. I read quite a lot about it all as I knew it wasn't right once she was getting older. Basically her 'sleep associations' (how she knows it's time for sleep) were milk or motion, so we had to teach her some different ones! The problem is that when babies start waking more at night (she did this around 9 months) they need to know how to settle themselves back to sleep.

We used a website called 'babysleepanswers'. I've mentioned it on here before, they have sleep mentors who will help you choose a sleep training method and support you to help you put into place. I got the link from here originally and friends have used it too to take the leap into sleep training - not an easy thing to do.

HTH

Thank you Janey! Will check out the website.

Good luck Daisy, let me know how you get on!

Our DS was similar. It lasted for a long time until we did gentle sleep training when he was just under 1 year old. But what helped in the meantime was
(1) rock/cuddle him until he was nearly asleep and then put him down drowsy
(2) introduce other (easier) sleep associations whilst rocking (like shushing and singing, saying 'sleepy time' etc)
This way DS learned in a gentle way to go to sleep in the cot. When I did a gentle version of controlled crying when he was just under 1 he went to sleep within 15 minutes (I was going in every 2, 4, 6 minutes and shushing, patting, stroking and picking him up when going in). I think this is because we gently and very slowly introduced him to going to sleep in the cot so he got used to it over time and needed less and less help from us. He now goes to sleep by himself after we put him down, say 'sleepy time' and sing a brief song. Takes 5 minutes, we often hear him grumble/chat/laugh himself to sleep once we have left the room.
You probably get there more quickly but I was just not happy to do controlled crying when he was younger.

Sounds like great advice. much prefer the gentler approach so will try your suggestions, thanks!