Self soothing baby techniques

[Ifyouthinkiwillsleepyoudream]

Hi everyone,

I have posted here before about my DS's sleep battles
Here's our new one.

He has hit the 7 month mark and for the last month or so and since starting on solids (coincidence?) he has started sleeping longer stretches at night, 5-7 hours without waking, which he never did, so yay!

It is still not very consistent but I am persevering and feeding less at night as I can tell he doesn't need it. He wakes up because he is rolling over and is either excited or stuck, not out of hunger. So I am hoping it will pass and become consistent as he masters this new skill.

However he still cannot fall asleep independently and requires rocking (anything from 10-40mins) or feeding (bf or bottle) in order to doze off. He will do so and remain asleep at night but not for long in the early morning or during the day. Naps are still a battle.

I would like him to learn to self sooth as I am sure that this will help him sleep longer stretches. We do have a routine: keep the room calm and dark, use noise machine, put in grobag and shush/pat till calm. When put in bed he either cries right away or entertains himself for a while and then cries.

Would any MNers who have gone through this stage be willing to share their stories about how they taught their LOs to fall asleep? I am after tips and tricks - there must be something I am missing!
Do you think 7 months is too young?

Thank you in advance

Normal :)

Ds is 21m and still needs a cuddle at nights. Takes about 90 mins to get him down. This is a vast vast improvement from 7 m when he was waking every 20 mins... day and night.

Sleeping 5-7hours a night at 7mis fantastic! I'd just keep doing what you're doing, and gradually back off.

Have you tried, white noise? ( the hairdryer was my daughters favourite)
Stars projected on the ceiling.
Black out blind.
Same routine each night, we did bath, stories and bottle/ milk, from a tiny age and kept it the same. We were very lucky that my daughter was able to self soothe from a young age, but she still does the same routine now at 4.5 years. ( I'm Pregnant again and hoping that this baby will be just as good, I never rocked or cuddled to sleep but maybe because my daughter was a very uncuddly child until older)

Not an expert by any stretch of the imagination but I started a thread about a week ago asking for advice on how to stop rocking my 8 month old DS to sleep.

Advice on there was to do it in stages, so reduce the amount of rocking by a little each night and (touch wood) this has been quite succssful, to the point that I am now just lightly swaying with periods of being still. I'm not sure how the next stage of trying in cot settling will work out but I'm still a good week away from trying that anyway.

I think you'll probably have to sort out the feeding to sleep first (my DS didn't feed to sleep so we skipped that part) and I know that several posters will be able to give you detailed advice on stopping that but again it's done in stages over the course of a week or two

I did the one where you pick them up / put them down, pick them up when they cry, put them down when they stop etc. Worked very well, but my baby was a bit younger than this. First time it took about 20 pick ups but then it did reduce quickly after that, if you can be arsed with it.

I have a thread in Parenting about rocking our DS to sleep, we always did it, but at nearly 10 months he will now go down by himself.

When put in bed he either cries right away or entertains himself for a while and then cries
He did exactly this, so we always ended up rocking. Gradually we noticed he would not always start crying, so we'd just leave him and he'd fall asleep. It took a while but now we hardly ever have to pick him back up after we put him in his cot after bedtime bottle. We just shush and pat if he needs a bit of extra help to settle. Good luck

Thank you all! I have to find those other threads and study them.

I have tried white noise and blackout blind. They help but don't solve the issue. And yes, I should look at feeding to sleep, I agree. He doesn't always need it. But some times.

We tried no rocking and see if he would cry and for how long, but no amount of picking up/putting down seemed to calm him down after a point. If anything, I think it pissed him off even more! So we aborted.

Thing is, apart from the fact that I think he could use some longer nap times (he will yawn and rub his eyes but still wake up after 20mins or half hour), I have been discussing nannysharing with another family, to start in a couple months time when I go back to work and the nanny implied that she might not want to take him on if he can't fall sleep on his own. So now I am stressed out that I won't find good childcare if I don't sort his sleep. Would nurseries also require him to sleep independently?

The stretches you are getting at night sound amazing!

Re childcare, my LO slept in a cuddle at nursery, then a pushchair or bouncer. When he moved to the bigger room he graduated to lying down on the mat but they all get their bums patted / rocked which isn't sleeping independently in my book!

My DS has a dummy, and we also found giving him something to cuddle helped. He has a soft cuddly hippo and a cellular blanket. He doesn't always use them, but just checked on on him and right now he has just fallen asleep with the blanket half covering his head.
Our routine is generally bedtime milk in dimly lit room, cuddle upright to see if he has any burps (shushing noises whilst we cuddle), lay in cot, quick rub of back, then leave. Go back in to rub his back/stroke his face if he fusses for too long - we can sort of tell now if he's making "I'm going asleep" fussy noises, or "ahhh I need some help" crying.
His daytime naps are all in the bouncer, between 30mins to an hour, one at 9am and one at 12.30/1pm ish