Your gentle ways to encourage good sleep, please

[Peppa33]

Dc2 is 3 weeks old, and getting carried everywhere. I use sling and hold asleep for 30 mins before putting down. Am happy with this at this stage.

I did the same for dc1 but never then managed a transition to her self settling. She is 2.5 now and daytime sleepsare still a stress and i sit with her for up to 45 minutes at night to get her to sleep.

So it is a mystery to me how the switch happens. And reading mn posts i sometimes wonder if there are just babies who do it themselves, and the rest who dont....or do some people do gentle things that accumulate to help? A lot of the things i read about, like pu/pd, were disastrous with dc1.

If you gently nudged your dc to self settle at what age did you start and what did you do? I would really like less sleep stress with this dc not least because i have two to deal with now!

Thanks

i used the no-cry sleep solution with ds2 at around 10 months.
basically it involves creating new sleep "cues" and gradually leaving baby to settle themselves.
worth buying the book imo

my other 2 however did just do it themselves!

I helped DD learn to self-settle at bedtime at around 5.5 months. I stopped feeding her to sleep (did bedtime feed with lights on, didn't put her in sleeping bag until after feed and then read her a story) and then did a sort of sshh-pat thing to help her drop off. It took a couple of weeks, I think, before I could just do bedtime routine, put her in cot and leave room and she'd fall asleep within about 15 minutes. It was relatively easy because she never got to the crying stage (just the moaning/mantra thing, which she does to get to sleep anyway). I found it worked better if I didn't pick her up, counterintuitively.

Now, at 6.5 months, most nights I can just put her down and she falls asleep on her own. However, any extenuating circumstances (illness, teething, being particularly horribly overtired) and we need to revert to feeding-to-sleep. Also, if she wakes up in the night and can't settle herself back down she either needs to be picked up and cuddled for a bit (by DH) or fed (by me) to get back to sleep, sshh-pat doesn't work for some reason.

Naps are another matter. For cot naps she usually needs to be swayed/ rocked to sleep. I've been lazy about tackling self-settling for those as it doesn't seem to make any difference to how long her nap is (and whether or not she pushes through the first sleep cycle) and I do love how sweet she looks falling asleep in my arms

Tbh I think it is so dependent on the individual child - ds self settled from 5mo with no help from us....until he was 22mo and went into a bed. We now have to sit with him until he's asleep (anything from 45mins to 2hrs) and if he wakes in the night (he does, frequently) it's a battle to get him back down. Sigh. He's now 2.2yrs and the hope that it's a phase is fast disappearing :(

Our karma for having such a good sleeping baby I think! Trouble is the next one is on the way and the current situation is not sustainable...

I installed a loose routine at about 5 weeks - bottle, bath, story spoken in hush tones and dim lights to calm after the excitement of the bath, then in cot with lights off and rainforest sounds on cot mobile.

At first I would shh and pat in his cot and run my finger down his nose to close his eyes, which could take up to half an hour, but by chance one day I left the room for a minute, went back and he was asleep! Now at 8 weeks I have the philosophy that if he isn't crying he is fine and he will just go to sleep in his own time if the room is dark, and he often does in just a few minutes. Then once he's fully asleep we're free to enter the room and can even watch tv without him waking :).

Every baby is different though and I think we've been incredibly lucky with DS. Not sure if that helped at all but the routine is useful for me and DP if nothing else, as we have something to aim for. Also you could try a white noise app, I find this works a treat when DS resists his daytime naps.

Gerty, thanks that is really helpful. I think with dc1 i intereted every tiny cry as a need to be picked up, i like your approach. Seeing the detail is really helpfulto me.

Misty,my dc1 was exactly like that when we moved tobigbed. Butover 4 months the night waking has fallen away and she now sleeps8-6.30. We didnt do amything like leaving her to crybecause it distresses me too much! My good news is that in spite of the arrivalof dc2 she hasremained settled at night. Wedo still stay with her to go off to sleep, though.

City, i seeyour point about not picking up. Again, thank you.
Feeling encouraged to give it all a go...!

I'm glad you found it helpful :). I'm very lucky DS doesn't need to be held all the time, he's been in the 98th centile from birth and now weighs over 15lb, he's far too heavy to carry around all day.