How does your baby self settle?

[ShowOfHands]

DD always, always, always fed to sleep and I said she'd self settle when ready. Which she finally did but by then she was a toddler, not a baby and she merely had her last feed of the day, had a story and settled down to sleep with her eyes closed.

DS is nothing like dd was and at 8 months has started self settling. It was an utter shock to me and is very amusing to watch. He has to be touching some part of my body with some part of his body but then he lies there with his eyes shut and babbles fairly loudly. He's lying next to me on the bed, his hand on my knee and he is shouting "mamamamama dadadadada boyboyboyboy tildatildatilda busbusbusbus upupupupup nonononononono yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah wheewheewheewheewhee wooowooowooowooo" and on and on ad infinitum. The gaps between sounds will increase until finally he'll start snoring slightly.

Just wondered what other things babies did to self settle. This is all very new to me after a non-sleeping child.

I have no idea as I just put DD 2.8 in and close the door and she settles herself now. I know she used to just smootch around in the cot until she found somewhere comfy and go to sleep when she was smaller.
But I am ROARING laughing at your wee boy :o That is hilarious. Imagine that continuing into adulthood!

Aww, showofhands that's so sweet ! DS (9 months) has been disengaging himself from the boob, rolling over and just lying there and going to sleep, and I've been having that whole an internal debate about whether and when to try to move it onto the next stage (i.e. I decide when he should go to sleep after feeding not him) in the hope that he might wake less in the night, but never quite resolve on any course of action. How did DS start doing it? Did you do anything to encourage it?

Ps, very developed speech on the part of your 8mth DS !

He chats away quite a lot. Says mama, dada, bus, his sister's name, yeah, no, up, look, cat etc. He's certainly talkative for his age. But he has a big sister to copy which helps. He just started rolling away after a feed a couple of weeks ago, looked around a bit, then did this. He does still feed to sleep about 60% of the time though. He has to be in the right mood- sleepy but happy- to settle in this way.

Ds1 self settled from around 10 weeks I think, only at night though, he still had to be walked/rocked/fed during the day. He jsut got popped into a cot, mobile cranked up and he would go off. When he got older he would chat away for up to an hour happily in bed, it was lovely to listen to over the monitor! Is suppose the fact that we both had to study has us "working" on his sleep early and being in a tiny little flat meant that it didn't involve traipsing up and down stairs if the mobile needed cranking up again.

The less said about dd and sleep the better. It makes me cry to remember it.

Ds2 is feeds to sleep but he is tiny :)

ds did something similar from about 6 months. he'd lie in his cot making "woooo wooo" noises. it would go on for half an hour plus. If he woke in the night he'd do the same, self settling without our input. At this point we got rid of the baby monitor because he would wake us up settling himself. He's now 2.2 and still a great settler.

Oh Indith. I think your dd was like my dd. Sleep was something other people had cracked. When pg with ds I was absolutely terrified. I genuinely expected the same again. To be utterly frank, it wasn't until she started school that her sleeping became predictable and consistent. She still doesn't need sleep though, not in the way normal humans do. But the lack of naps from being a baby, never settling, up all the bloody time, oh lord it makes me shudder thinking about it.

bonzo, I LOVE the woooo woooo noises. They seem so full of meaning sometimes.

Add in a good dose of PND, feeding problems and the fact that she didn't feed to sleep (feeding=screaming), didn't rock to sleep, didn't walk to sleep....the only thing she did was scream to sleep. Having ds2 has been so lovely, it is wonderful but also makes me more upset about missing out on all this with dd.

Baby chatter is amazing :) Ds 1 used to tell stories and as words started to creeo in you could hear him jabbering away to his toys about what he had done that day. I think it is a vital part of processing things for them and winding down. We always found with ds the days he chatted before sleep he slept much better than days he went straight to sleep, those days he was more prone to being unsettled or having night terrors.

Actually, you're right. DS sleeps really well on those nights where he jabbers on for a while before going to sleep. It is almost like he's just listing his day for us and moving on into sleep.

I read something a while ago written by an AP parent who'd had several dc, kept them in a sling, bf on demand, never let them cry etc etc. And then she had a baby that cried. And didn't just cry but screamed, particularly to sleep. Never calm, hated being rocked, screaming escalated if you tried to shush or help. And it was written years later and the crux of the article was that that dc was just different. And he grew up equally happy, equally secure, but just deals with things very, very differently. She'd honestly thought that a child having its needs met wouldn't cry. But throughout his childhood he'd carried on needing to verbalise his feelings in an immediate and physical way. Maybe dd is just very different? My niece HAS to cry to sleep. Even when happy and relaxed, she does have to rail at the world for 5 minutes each night. Intervene and she goes crazy. We call her the tortured artist. She's perfectly happy, is just her personality.

I promise you this though, you've done absolutely brilliantly with all your dc. You are super duper as M would say. Whatever happened with dd, you got through it together. And gosh, look at her. She's fab.

Do you have a link/name? Sounds like it would be a good read. I usually end up wanting to punch authors in the face. 3 in a Bed, The Food of Love and ocmpany all make me rage as they have smug bits along the lines of "a baby fed on demand will not need to have a comforter or suck their thumb/will not cry" and so on. I'd also quite like to have a quiet word with the 3 in a Bed woman about understanding statistics because she quite clearly doesn't but that's another thread .

She is fab though you are right. Drives me potty but I adore her.

Yours is wonderful too. Sounds like a complete loon just like mine :) 5 years this summer you know, way too long. I'd love to rectify that.

Gosh, my DD (also now 5) was another screamer! I'm interested in the AP parent's experience too as I also feel bad about how DD was as a baby - always assumed it was my ineptness that I failed to 'get' her to sleep well.

DS is different - although he doesn't sleep any 'better' in terms of waking less, he is much calmer when going to sleep and also when he wakes up, which makes for much more relaxed co-sleeping and a much less tired mum, despite multiple wakings every night. My main question is really how things will progress with DS 'naturally' if I don't do anything to push him further along the self-settling road - e.g. by using gradual withdrawal.

I'm ashamed to say I did CC with DD when she was 6 months after co-sleeping. I was getting very tired and low and everyone around me was pushing it. It did work and she has slept pretty well ever since, but I still feel sad thinking about it and don't think I could contemplate doing it again . But I'm also not sure whether I can handle the return to work with DS waking as much as he does. Sorry, rambling on here, but it is something I spend quite a bit of time pondering...

I'm still very impressed at your DS's speech showofhands. Mine babbles away for england, but nothing close to actual words. DD is convinced otherwise of course . Does your DS still wake in the night and does he self-settle then?