Should my 3month old be able to fall asleep when I put her down awake?

[Rachie1986]

Just that really.

Am I "making a rod for my own back" etc by her falling asleep on me and then transferring?

Btw sometimes it doesn't even work - during the day if I put her down asleep she frequently immediately wakes again

Not necessarily. In fact, probably not.
Just cuddle her.

carry on with what you are doing, its absolutely fine

Thank you!

It doesn't help that we keep her upright after a feed for 20mins due to reflux, so quite often she falls asleep during that anyway!

I shall go back to my cuddling..

Enjoy those cuddles, they are gorgeous, and congratulations on your lovely baby!

I put my DS down awake (4.5m), and he falls asleep on his own - I do sit beside his crib, but I don't do anything. He still wakes up 6-10 times a night. So this falling asleep from awake is really not a panacea, at least not in my case...

Just starting to think that maybe I'm doing it wrong by letting DS feed to sleep too. At the last feed of the day I don't really see what I can do-He just falls asleep and I'm not going to wake him to make him self settle!!! But....in the day it's either buggy or boob. I went out for a drink with my sister last night and apparently DS was thrown into a rage at not having me there to bf him to sleep. He'll go to sleep in his chair sometimes but putting him into his cot awake and leaving him....absolutely no chance

If it helps my DS was 6.5 months before we could put him down awake. I have friends who sleep trained their babies earlier but I don't think my LO would have been ready any sooner. At 3/4 months I did whatever worked to get him to sleep and tried to ignore all the 'rod for your back' stuff.

If it helps my DS was 6.5 months before we could put him down awake. I have friends who sleep trained their babies earlier but I don't think my LO would have been ready any sooner. At 3/4 months I did whatever worked to get him to sleep and tried to ignore all the 'rod for your back' stuff.

Oops double post!

It's fine - I read a great book which explained that babies still think they're in cave man times. They don't know that they're in a nice safe house in a nice safe town, their instinct tells them to YELL and do it loudly if they have been left alone, in the hope that they will be found first by another human and not a predator.

DS was about 3 or 4 when I started leaving him awake on a regular basis.

You could probably do it before that, too! That's just what happened/worked for us :)

Just to buck the trend... if your baby has a sleep association that can't be replicated when they rouse in the middle of the night, this is likely to cause an issue when they reach 4 months old. So Ewan the dream sheep and white noise on all night, fine... feeding/rocking to sleep/sitting there holding their hand for an hour - more likely to cause an issue.

At 4 months their sleep changes permanently and they have light and deep phases of sleep, rather than zonked out for hours in the day that they were doing beforehand. This is why you see so many threads along the lines of 'my 4 month old woke me up every 45 minutes last night. He fed for two mouthfuls and then fell back to sleep each time.'

It doesn't effect everyone but if you want to encourage self soothing you can try shush pat as well as putting down drowsy but awake (my DS didn't like this one too much. He would startle, scream and then fully wake up again, doh!).

If it happens and they regress you can either ride it out, it usually starts to remedy itself between 7 months and 2 years old, or you can look at pupd, cc or the many no cry solutions.

I'm pretty sure that sleep regressions either happen or not and there's nothing you can do to prevent it.