how long does it take for your baby to go to sleep? and what do you do?

[rhetorician]

dd2 is 10 months, and is a crap sleeper - our whole lives are dominated by her sleep. We have recently stopped feeding her to sleep, (about a week ago), but it is taking 30-40 minutes of rubbing her back, patting etc to get her to go for a nap - she constantly tries to get up, thrashes about in her cot. I have tried walking away and letting her cry, but that doesn't do much, she has some music but that doesn't work either. So this morning she was fed at 9.20, fell asleep on boob, woke up when put in cot and since then DP and I have been mucking about trying to get her to settle. It's now 10.10 and DP has just got her up again. So we will repeat process all over again in 30 minutes.

I work from home - or supposedly work from home. She also wakes a lot in the night - usually at 11 and 3, and is hard to settle after the 3am feed. She cannot self-settle, and I don't know how to teach her. The gentle sleep training has done nothing other than to make the process of putting her to sleep much more protracted.

So I am interested in what you do, when you started doing it, and how long it took to work.

I feel your pain. DS (6months) is a rubbish sleeper but we have recently had some success with naps.

I charted his every move for a week as I'd totally lost it with cues. I discovered I was trying to put him down over tired. He needs to nap every two hours was my first finding.

I then discovered was he was way too overstimulated to self settle or nap , so i started managing his awake time. I put him in the sling 20 mins before the next nap is due to wind him down, wait for 3 yawns (trail & error) zip him in the grow bag, pop him in the cot. 9/10 he just rolls over & goes to sleep!!

Been doing it for three weeks now & it's started to help his nighttime sleep too.

sounds good seriously! glad you have found something that works. I am just starting a sleep diary too - suspect that she winds herself up - very lively and active and alert, so even getting her to lie down is something of a challenge!

More info here

Xpost yes that what I found too. We now 'wind down' in a darkish room, no talking etc while he calms down. He'll only snooze for 45 mins though but I'm just pleased its regularly & easy!

DS is 5 months. For the first 4 months we drove each other crazy with me trying to settle him by feeding him to sleep and then putting him down asleep and then tiptoeing away. He would wake at least 2 or 3 times in the hour after bedtime, (and often every 2 hours throughout the night) and each time I'd have to feed/cuddle him to sleep. Bedtime could easily take 2 hours. I was mega stressed as would be constantly waiting for the monitor to go after I'd crept down the stairs.

About a month ago I read the Tizzie Hall 'save our sleep' book. There's a load of hogwash in there, but the bit about leaving them to self settle and to differentiate between shouting and proper heartbroken sobbing I found really useful. The first time I did it, I fed DS, put him in his cot awake and he started to shout, I immediately wanted to run upstairs but left him just to see. He was asleep within 5 minutes and slept for 5 hours, no random wakings after 10 minutes. Now he's often asleep before I get to the bottom of the stairs. There are exceptions, like last night, where he'd fallen asleep in the car for 5 minutes at 4.30 which made bedtime horrendous!

For the first time ever as well we have managed some naps at home, although that is still hit and miss. The thing that I realised is that DS used to cry when I was trying to settle him, and it could and often did take hours and hours and hours. Now he sometimes cries in his own for 10 minutes, but then sleeps so much better. In the middle of the night as well I put him down awake after feeds and he goes off to sleep again usually without a noise. He normally only feeds twice a night now between 6pm and 7am. If he wakes before 3 hours has passed since the last feed I go in and give him a cuddle and put him back in his cot, saying 'back to sleep you're not hungry' which surprisingly enough seems to work. I work on the principle that if he carries on crying for longer than 5 minutes after that he IS hungry so I'll go back and feed him but it's never happened yet!

I am a complete bedtime routine fiend. Everything happens in exactly the same order at pretty much exactly the same time every single night, wherever we are. We have white noise playing at bedtime and he has a cuddly rabbit that has to be in bed with him. The plus side of that is that my DH is also able to put him to bed as DS knows what's coming next. Things are still far from perfect, we still have evenings like last night (half an hour of outraged shouting/crying) or nights like the night before last (he woke up for feeds every two hours zzzz) but overall it is better.

You have to steel yourself a bit to some crying which I struggled with massively and I will probably get flamed for it.

Controlled Crying; our Ds went from taking 1-2hours a night to sleep to 2-10mins (10mins on a bad night)!
It took 2 nights, one of those being a 10min night.

He's 9 months, moved into his own room last week & has a few blankets & toys in cot & a dummy at night.

We've been really strict with his naps & timing, only downside is we can't get him to stop being an early riser;
5(!)-7am Wake Up
7am Bottle
9am 20min nap
11am Breakfast (10-20min gap between food & bottle)
12- short nap
3pm Lunch (10-20 min gsp between food & bottle
After Lunch- 1-2 hour nap
6,30ishpm Dinner (30 min gap between food & bottle)
7pm Bedtime
7.15pm Asleep. Has worked every night for the month & a bit we've been doing it.

We shush the house from 630-ish (no tv or loud noises or excitment), we walk him around the house saying 'night' to everything & then put him down, we check up on him after 2min, then 5min, then 10min, then 15, then 20. If he ever gets to 20min we would start again from 2.

This is all very interesting! DS2 is six months and impossible to put down for a nap or awake at bedtime. Feeding to sleep is all very well but increasingly doesn't work and even the pram isn't reliable. Seriously - did your DS not cry when you first started putting him in the cot?

DD is 9¾ months.
I still feed her to sleep.
or sometimes she'll sleep in the buggy if she's really tired.

i go dancing on a Thursday and DH manages to get her off to sleep after a bottle of expressed milk and several minutes (about 3/4 hour, he said) of crying. eye-rubbing, scratching, pacing, rocking etc.

About 5 minutes. Breastfeed. 16 weeks.

she won't nap in the day.
she'll fall asleep on the boob, but as soon as there is noise, she'll wake. unless she's really tired.

in the evening, we get her ready for bed at 9ish and then she'll play and then feed to sleep, whereupon we all go to bed and she wakes until she's fed back to sleep.
she'll wake 2 or 3 times in the night and feed back to sleep then she'll sleep from 7ish to 9ish when i need to get up.
she's feeding asleep now, and that's the first time today.

we don't do the usual routines because she won't have it.

We never put him in a cot during the day. Sometimes, after he's fed, he'll play a while on his mat, and then just take a nap there. Sometimes he'll nap in the carseat or pram if we're on the move.

At night I bf him lying down and then quietly roll away. He'll stay asleep as I haven't moved him.

7 months- wont feed to sleep. If I catch her at exactly the right moment for naps,then 5 mins or so of patting. Otherwise 25 minutes and a very sore wrist.

Bedtime patting was beginning to take forever - over an hour of patting. We've started to leave her to it and although it still takes 30 minutes or so of her arsing around (not crying), she goes off eventually..

AWomanCalledHorse Did you do CC while your DC was still sleeping in your room then? How did you do it (as usually it assumes baby is in its own room)?

Elphaba, yes, we started it before we moved him as there wasn't much point moving him & then getting up 3 times a night (he randomly started night feeding again, after not doing for 3/4 months).
We did exactly the same routine, but if he woke up during the night (he did for a little while, only once or twice a night) one of us would start the CC over again & the other would kip on the sofa, as it wouldn't work if he could see one of us in the bed....so not great if one of you is a heavy sleeper

He went from being a great day napper (in the pram) to not napping at all, now he naps better in the cot (better for me as I can crash & bang about!), he's never been one to fall alseep anywhere but the cot, car or pram.

Ds 4 months goes down every night in about half an hour.

We have a chair in his room. I pull the blackout curtains. Feed him his bedtime bottle. Then put him down half asleep and pop his dummy in then leave him to it. He might shuffle and grunt for a bit. If he isnt settling I will go in and pick him up without talking and cuddle him and then put him down again.... he usually goes off after that. Sometimes he goes straight away.

He sleeps through from 6pm to 4am and feeds and then goes straight back to sleep till 6am.

Dd now aged 9 was the same.

I think having a totally dark room (absolutely black) and no talking helps them to separate day and night.

Arti a bit of grizzling occasionally but no real crying. If he starts crying I sling him for that nap & try again for the next one. I know he wont do it & have learnt not to put us through it!

I'm a total wuss though & hate it when he cries

We started reading to our dd before bedtime for 5 minutes and found it has really cut down on how long it takes her to go to sleep (from 10 - 30 mins down to 5 mins). She's 6 months old, and we were doing a bottle, bath, bed routine, but actually given the fuss involved in dressing them after a bath, I'm not sure that this was particularly soothing. We now bath her, put her sleep suit on and the gro-bag, and cuddle her on our lap with the room quite dimly lit and quiet, and read. Currently reading a Moomin book (no pictures really - so nothing to distract her). After a few pages, we stick her in the cot, dummy in and leave her, and she seems to drift off pretty quick.

Admittedly, only been doing this 2 weeks, so could be coincidence that we've had no bad nights since.... And we're still struggling with the night time wakings.

P.S. Is the Tizzie Hall 'save our sleep' book worth a read? I'm feed up off being woken 2 - 3 times a night, and willing to try any tricks to reduce the night wakenings?

Since reading 'save our sleep' things have settled down a lot! He now tends to be asleep by 6pm and we have two wakings for feeds at around 11 and 3, then up for the day at 7ish... We now also have managed naps at home which were unheard of!

Yesterday was a good day-up at 6.45, nap 9.45-10.30, nap 12.45-2.15 and asleep by 6pm. Night wakings at 11 and 3. There was no crying at nap time or bedtime. In his cot awake, asleep in minutes. Before he could self settle this was unimaginable!

Now he needs to stop feeding in the night....!

DTs are 10.5 months.
Wake at 630 ish, have a morning nap in cots at 930 for an hour. Usually just self settled for this nap. DTS has a comforter which he cannot sleep without, it's a little blanket thing with a cow's head and he sucks it, needs washing every other day. DTD cries for 1-2 minutes and goes off to sleep.

Afternoon nap more tricky. Usually they stay awake from 1030 am to around 2, then will have a nap of about an hour but only in pram. In their cots they just babble to each other, stand up and laugh at each other. Yesterday DTD did not have a nap in the afternoon at all

Bedtime at 7pm, I put music on and mobile and i leave the room. DTS sucks his cow until asleep, DTD cries for a few minutes then goes to sleep. Thankfully they sleep all night ATM!!

no, this is the book you need when you need sleep
it works for toddlers too.

this one is more child-friendly