Sleep training for 12 week old... When and how?

[starfish12]

I'm pretty sure my 12 week old cant self settle... In the day I get him to sleep either out in the pram (he tends to stir/wake if we stop), or being jigged in the sling and at night I feed him to sleep.

I have been trying to pull my boob out at the last minute but can't manage this every time during his 4-5 night wakings. Unless he's on the tipping point of sleep he screams, head butts to get back on my boob and I always relent otherwise he will continue to scream and then any chance at sleep is gone.

The health visitor told me all of the above were bad habits and I need to stop them and suggested I let him cry to see if he would settle on his own. I said that I thought 12 weeks was too young to let cry and she agreed!!

I feel I've made a bit of progress as 6 weeks ago he would only sleep on my chest, however as I continue to feed him to sleep night after night I can't help but wonder how the hell I break the habit. The most he's ever slept is 3.5 hours.

Anyway my long winded post is for advice on whether to worry about this at 12 weeks, do things tend to 'sort themselves out' or do I need to get tough?

I've also tried a dummy, finger, ssshing and patting to no avail... And have read baby whisperer, no-cry but the advice sounds so easy as in 'put your baby down when drowsy' - my DS never ges drowsy as he's too busy thrashing around when tired...

Thanks for any help/thoughts...

No advice I'm afraid, but watching with interest... I have a 12 week old too and have posted a similar thread here (called 'have I made a rod...'). I can't put him down when drowsy as he seems to skip the eyes closing, gently drifting off stage and goes from normal to frantic and thrashing. I cannot imagine how to teach self soothing.

here

I read this often to make myself feel better. And my DS is waayyy older than 12 weeks :)

Agree with mycat and thankyou for that link. Ds is 7 months, rocked to sleep in day and boobed to sleep at night. HV has suggested cry it out, which I won't be doing. Dd was always boobed to sleep til about 11 months when she started self settling, without ever resorting to sleep training. ( Now she's four she gets up at night a few times a week with increasingly inventive excuses but that's another story!) I would say enjoy the snuggles and don't worry about it too much.12 weeks is still only little :)

That link made me feel better too!

Your babies are tiny! Please don't worry about self-settling or habits or anything yet, just enjoy your babies

Don't worry about it.

I boobed/rocked both of mine to sleep at this stage. Never did crying to sleep or anything like that and they got the hang of it when they were ready. Have been excellent sleepers ever since. Enjoy the cuddles!

12 weeks is tiny! Enjoy your baby's! The best you can do at this age IMO is set up a bedtime routine which can be lovely for both of you.

12 weeks is tiny, don't let your HV back in and complain.

Tell your HV to bog off!!!
12 weeks is tiny and entirely natural for them to suckle all night. I boobed my DD to sleep til she was about 11 months old and she stopped needing it. I fed her tonight and put her down awake and she's 15 months now. It's a skill they learn when they need to. Enjoy your baby. You are doing the right thing xxx

I agree with all the others. 12 weeks is tiny. Just love him. Sleep will come in time.

(And I am saying that with a 2 year old who still has dodgy sleep habits, but I have no regrets at all)

ooh, and google "The fourth trimester" which suggests that the first 12 weeks at least, babies still want to be inside, which explains why they sleep well on your chest/on the move/ in a sling etc.

You are doing a great job.

I actually started swaddling dd at 12 to get of being rocked / fed to sleep . It worked like a treat only lasted a month tho before she turned in to what looked like stomach ct

Crunches.
But then couldn't self settle in bloody pram!

So I started to look for sleep cues after reading the baby whisper and she went down awake .

I borrowed a book from the library called Save Our Sleep (think it was by Tizzie Hall or something like that) when DD2 was about this age and it was amazing. She wasn't sleeping at all during the day unless I held her after a boob feed, but she was doing reasonably well at night - just 1 or 2 feeds as well as a dream feed at my bed time.

There was no CIO or anything it was just laying out a sleep / nap schedule with a 'comfort item' (muslin in my case) to aid self soothing. It just clicked so well with my DD, within a few days she was having 2 2hr naps a day with just one feed at night, and within a few weeks she was sleeping 12 hrs through with just the dream feed. I was combine feeding so that dream feed was formula so not sure if that made a difference.

If I remember rightly the idea was to put her down at the time laid out with the muslin and leave for a minute, but go back and pick up / cuddle / soothe until calm if she didn't settle then try again. I don't remember ever stepping out with her very upset or leaving her to cry any longer than I would to tell whether it was just a little chunter or if she was really crying IYSWIM.

My DSis did take the piss a bit because I stuck to this routine like clockwork for a few weeks but it was so heavenly being able to take a shower / eat without being screamed for I couldn't have cared less
FWIW she's nearly one and still sticks to a similar schedule now, just with shorter naps. And 12 -13 hours at night with no feed after bedtime.

12 weeks old is very young to be able to self-settle. I'm sure some babies can do it but loads can't. I rocked/fed DS to sleep until he was about 6 months old, then tried to put him down awake (starting off by rocking until he was drowsy, then putting down and gradually reducing the rocking) and it worked. No "training" required at all, he did it when he was ready.

Please don't sweat about it. I was exactly the same as you 5 wks ago, spent time & effort getting rid of feeding to sleep/putting down asleep/rocking etc. Ds now poorly & 4 month sleep regression upon us and I'm right back to feeding to sleep/co sleeping etc for the sake of sleep & sanity! It all changes regularly, 12 wks is so little too! Enjoy your LO.

I'm marking my place with interest and reading all these useful replies as this post could have been written by me, my dd is the same as this and I was wondering how much to stress think about it now vs how much it will naturally sort itself out. I visited parents and in laws over Xmas which has messed up the one bit of routine we had going, so I will reread the advice here each time I feel like crying!

bloody health visitors.

www.isisonline.org.uk/

and the term 'self settle' was coined in a research paper many years ago to contrast against 'signalling' - which babies and infants do at night to search for their mums. true self settling is actually about becoming sociable and asking for help.

see here: uncommonjohn.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/self-soothing-possibly-the-biggest-lie-ever-foisted-on-parents/

some babies sleep some don't. some need a little more than others to feel relaxed enough to sleep. some start out sleeping really well then it all goes to pot and vice versa. ime A LOT can be blamed on teeth esp past 6 months, and developmental stuff - including how capable they are at rolling over to get comfy, tucking their legs under etc. Independence in all things comes slowly, it can't be forced, perhaps helped and sleep cues developed (I personally think music/sound v helpful, the point of lullabyes) but every baby is different - imo baby sleep books are pretty useless as there could be one written for each baby - plus in the early days there's a big difference between bf and ff.

but ff doesn't guarantee a better sleeping baby, I know many who wake as much as bf babies at past one.

i guess in defence of hvs they do have mum's mh interests at heart of which sleep can be an issue. however my mh was hugely affected by actually trying to achieve 'holy grails' of sleep foisted on me by all an sundry. Drs were v helpful (and my mum who kept saying 'it will come') as many just said 'oh mine didn't till 5' and my mum (who is the most amazing diary keeper ever, currently re writing them!!) was told by her Dr that she slept with her kids. And my mum's hv said, in the 70s, that night feeds at 2 was still perfectly normal. All I wish to illustrate here is that there is a mammoth culture of achieving perfection in baby sleep, blaming the baby and our methods. A new mum I know who is a pediatrican concluded at 8 months that there's little you can do to baby to get them to sleep, but you can do a lot about how prepared you are to cope. It's really hard for some, I never slept as a baby (genetic?!) and my ds struggles but we're coping the best we can.
I wish hvs would read this:
www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2344

And I wished I listened more carefully to an old granny who said 'divnt care if they're sleepin on ya heed as long as they're sleepin!!!'

seriously please enjoy your baby. I lost too much sleep over sleep. And I'm soooooooooo grateful for boob to sleep now at 13 mo. granted there have been phases where it hasn't worked and some grow out of it sooner (so songs and music can help if you start now) but from what I can tell no different to ff babies and I currently know ff 14 mos whose parents are just giving a bottle in the night as it just works.

The 'pantley pull off' thing can help (the main thing in the no cry sleep solution which is a fairly sensible book but hard to do) - I did it sometimes - but the fluttery sucking both helps get more milk flowing and triggers sleepy hormones in baby so don't get overly hung up about it.

sorry for the epic, I just wish I could rewind a year and tell myself the above!

you may not be able to read the full bmj thing so here is the link to the pdf if you wish. www.dur.ac.uk/sleep.lab/

this response to it I feel is a pretty good sum up:

"A useful editorial, reflecting the experiences of breastfeeding counsellors who frequently support mothers whose confidence as parents is undermined by the expectation that their babies should be sleeping longer at night. This expectation is largely cultural and social, but it can be bolstered by HCPs who may (erroneously) assess breastfeeding adequacy in terms of the night time behaviour of the infant. What seems to help, as Ball indicates, are practical strategies that enable new families to increase their resiliance to 'broken nights' - and we could do with some good studies into what helps most."

That's a great summary darjeeling

OP your baby is still so tiny. Bfing is designed to send him to sleep. He will learn to go to sleep on his own when he's bigger and ready, for now enjoy the sleepy cuddles.

He's only 12 weeks old. If my baby had slept through at that age I would have been worried. There's so much pressure to get babies to sleep through, it's not natural.

The other day I had an epiphany. My mil said 'oh, my baby slept through from 4 months' or what have you, so I asked her what does 'sleeping through' mean to her and she said from 11pm to 6am!! My god, that's not sleeping through and I told her that! To me sleeping through is 7pm to 7am. My lo is 1 and she still wakes about 2 times on average in 12 hours. At its worst she work 6 to 8 times at around 9 months when 4 top teeth came through.

*woke

I'm no expert but have a nearly 7 month old now, and think I wrote a similar post at about 12 weeks. He only napped in pram and very bad night sleeper, often in bed with me with multiple wake ups and hours to get to sleep without boob.

I stressed about this for a long time and it stopped my enjoying the 'now' because I was worried about the future. In the end I relaxed and went with it and gave him the opportunity to go to sleep on his own if he didn't fall asleep on boob. Gradually he got there, and we reached the point where most of the time he would go down awake in cot.

We've had some hiccups (in middle of major one now) and that normally results in him being back in bed with me for a while.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I tied myself in knots about it, and I don't think it achieved anything but spoiling things a bit. My instinct is that at the moment DS will do things when he's ready and the old cliche about going with your instincts has worked well for me when I've actually done it. My dad reminded me of that last night as I was in tears listening to DS scream through monitor at 9:30pm (DH with him).

breathes huge sigh of relief

Thank you all for your responses, I think you've helped save my sanity. I got in a huge stress/massive obsession for the first 6 weeks about bloody foremilk/hindmilk imbalance and I didn't want to spend more of my mat leave needlessly worrying about something else!

Have been enjoying the nightime snuggles guilt-free! :-) x

Darjeeling... I'm from Newcastle so your granny comment made me laugh! Thanks for the links too x