How can I break the rocking to sleep habit?

[RedRose27]

DD is 14 weeks old. I posted a thread a few weeks ago about her fighting sleep in the day since she was about 8 or 9 weeks. She continues to fight sleep in the day, and I have to rock her for every nap to get her sleep, currently 4 or 5 naps a day.

DD can only cope with about an hour of awake time before needing sleep again, sometimes up to 90 minutes awake time. As soon as I see a yawn or eye rub I know she needs to sleep as she quickly gets overtired. But how do I help her to get to sleep without rocking her?

If I leave her down in her cot, she doesn't sleep, can lie there happily for 30 mins. But I feel like there's a clock ticking all the time as every minute she stays awake she's getting more overtired, making it harder for her to get sleep, and therefore even less likely to go to sleep on her own.

She now weighs 15 pounds 6 and my arms, shoulders back and knees are in pain all the time from rocking her. Yesterday it took over 40 mins to get her to sleep as she was so overtired. Then it takes her ages to get into a deep sleep and I end up sitting with her in my arms as every time I try to put her down she wakes up.

I am considering bringing the pram into the house (usually folded in the car) and trying to rock her in that. I know it won't solve the problem, will just be easier on my arms.

Sometimes if we go out for a walk she will sleep in the pram. Other times I can walk for 20 or 25mins with her smiling up at me! Even though she is due a nap and tired.

I know that this is a habit we have gotten her into, but I don't know he to teach her a different method of getting her to sleep. How will she know that sleep is the ultimate aim!?

We have a good routine at night, bath, story, feed, cot. Sometimes she falls asleep on the boob and other times she wakes at the end of a feed, or when I put her down. She can then get herself to sleep and we can hear her sucking her hand and she usually goes off in about 15 mins. She must be able to get herself back to sleep during the night as she usually only wakes us once or twice. For example last night she slept from 6:30 until 3 and then back to sleep after a feed until 6:30 again. I can put her down at night after a feed awake and we hear her making a bit of noise and she gets herself to sleep.

I know I'm lucky that the nights are good, but the days are starting to get me down. I want to teach her good habits but not sure where to start.

We was like that and I can offer no help as I rocked or fed her to sleep at every sleep time until 5/6 months! What was funny was that she kind of let me know she didn't need or want that anymore as one nap time I was rocking and she was so fidgety so I put her in cot and she went right off. I read about all different techniques but I found rocking her the laziest easiest thing for us. Sorry to be no help but all I can say is at 10.5 months old, those days seem such a long time ago and it goes by so quick that you look back and wonder why you worried so much. Good luck

Anyone else? Any other advice would be much appreciated.

Since I first posted, I have managed to get her to fall asleep in her rocker chair once! And also while rocking the car seat once (I had put her in it to take her home, and decided to rock it at see if I could get her to go off).

I have decide to stop fighting her to sleep as it was just making both of us unhappy. But it seems she is sleeping even less - yesterday she had 30 min nap at 8:30, 40 min nap at 10:30, 20 mins in the car at 1pm, and then only 10 mins at about 4pm! She seems happy enough when she's awake, but I know she must be overtired.

We rocked dd to sleep til she was about nine months old, it was either that or feed her to sleep. 14 weeks is very young to be thinking about trying to break habits IMO.

I was going to suggest using the pram as that's what we ended up doing. You could also try a dummy instead if you don't want to rock her to sleep.

I'd give the pram a go but buy one of the dark snoozy covers for it so she has less stimulation. Hopefully you might be able to slowly reduce the movement.

We use a Ewan the sheep, and a sleep sack and a comforter to cue sleep for night and naps.

If she's happy awake I wouldn't worry about being over tired. Ds also 14 weeks generally goes to sleep well at night and will settle with dummy (although sleep regressed at night here) in day sleeps in pushchair when moving, in sling or when rocked. Hegenerally cries a lot as soon as tired but can relate to sore arms/back. I'm focusing on getting him down when asleep more than needing to be rocked to sleep at the moment!

I remember joking with someone when my dd was the same age as yours that at this rate I'd still be rocking her to sleep when she was two hahahaha ( I still rock her to sleep and was 2 this month) I have quite defined upper arms !

We were in a similar situation with naps and in the end I just gave up. DS would sleep in the car or pram but until he started crawling I was lucky to get thirty mins in the day. After the crawling he went to sleeping 7 - 6:30 and an hour or so in the day. He won't sleep at all without his monkey (we have a few now!)

We found it much easier when we ignored the 'three naps a day' advice and just did what we liked. It helped that we had a mate in the same boat.

I was confusing 'overtired' with 'Gerrof mummy I want to play'

If you're worried about over tiredness because of 30 minutes settling to sleep, then surely just put your baby down to sleep 30 minutes earlier than of normally would do until it doesn't take as long as 30 minutes any more?