Advice on getting 6 month old to fall asleep on his own

[user1480869712]

Hi there, hoping for some advice - I have a very sweet and well behaved 6 month old baby boy, who is not a bad sleeper but there are a couple of things I wonder if we can work on. Until about 3 weeks ago he was in his bassinet next to me, and he used to sleep 7-7, with one feed around 11 when I was going to bed, it was quite glorious. He used to go to sleep with his dummy, spit it out and then sleep soundly without it.

But he outgrew his bassinet and we've had to move him into his big cot (still in our room), and this has brought on some absolutely awful nights of him waking up every hour! he cries for his dummy, rolls around like mad and I have found him on the opposite end of the cot on his side, so parallel to it!
I've been trying to get him off the dummy as it drives me mad to get up every hour to put it back in, and we've made some progress with him sleeping until about 4 am, self settling and then again at around 5.30-6 am. But the only way to get him to sleep without a dummy is on me being rocked, and then I have to hold him for 20 mins before putting him in his cot or he starts screaming. Once he starts screaming, there is no calming him down unless I pick him up and rock him for some time. He just gets more and more furious if I try to calm him without picking him up! If I just put him down in his cot when he's drowsy but awake he just screams and screams, so basically he can't get to sleep on his own without his dummy.

His naps are not bad, he naps about 1 hour on average every 2 - 2.5 hours or so, a bit longer in the morning and a bit shorter later in the day.

Any advice on how I can get him to sleep on his own, and generally just better at self settling without the dummy? I recognise the situation is not bad and maybe I should just count myself lucky that we had a couple of months of good sleep!

Give him a dummy.

Greatest and simplest independant soothing method. Dummies are ace.

Take a until about 8-10 months old for baby to have the manual dexterity to reinsert own dummy and that's when they truely come into their own.

Until then, I sewed a ribbon into the sleeping bag with a press stud at end. From my bed I could reach into the cot, find ribbon, get dummy, reinsert - all without opening my eyes or moving from within my warm bed.

Thank you FateDestiny - I'll give it a go although I still have to get out of bed to put it back in as the cot is not next to me, but hey!

How do you find weaning them off the dummy later on? This is why I was trying to take it off him now because I hear it's harder later, but would love to hear other's experience.

None whatsoever.

I wasn't in a rush to get rid of the dummy though. I dust need to be, from 12m onwards the dummy was only used for a few minutes dropping to sleep and that was it. 10 minutes a day in the cot only was doing no harm and providing lots of independant comfort.

So I waited until I could negotiate. All my children have been 4 when we got rid of the dummy. I offered a special toy when child could do 2 weeks without dummy. Waited until child said they wanted to earn their present.

Entirely the child's decision so zero effort or hassle for me.

The problems with dummies arise when:
(a) they are in the child's mouth all the time!
(b) they are removed at an age when the child still needs comfort to sleep (preschool children require some form 9f comfort)

Thank you for the advice FATEdestiny - I gave him his dummy back, and I think that he just needed to know it was there, as he has been sleeping without it since, and settling himself to sleep! He has slept for 12+ hours the past 3 nights without the dummy, I keep it next to me in case he needs it but nope, sometimes he wakes up and gets himself back to sleep easily! I've been giving him the dummy for his naps as well and he seems to have consolidated them over the last couple of days, and now only has two naps of about 90 minutes each which works for me!

Thank you!