Sleep

[MummaRice]

Hi everyone

Was hoping for some advice.
I have a little girl 12 weeks old she's very good with feeding(bottle fed ) she sleeps 8pm till 6am on the odd occasion wakes up for a bottle about 2am. My dilemma is getting her to sleep, she will only go off if being rocked or in her bouncer

Would like her to be able to go off in her cit on her own but not sure I like the idea of letting her cry it out. She also has a dummy.

Any advice hugely appreciated xxx

12 weeks is tiny. It is perfectly natural for your baby to want to be rocked to sleep, are you worried about bad habits? Because they are utter nonsense in my opinion is it a problem for you rocking to sleep? X

Your daughter sounds like she's sleeping amazingly well for 12 weeks. As pp says, rocking etc is only an issue at this age if it's a problem for you, so don't worry about continuing if that is what works.

Tbh I'm not sure there is any soothing method at this age that won't require some input from you - completely independent sleep tends to develop a bit later ime. But I can tell you what I was doing with my two at this point to move towards independent sleep in the cot. It was basically the "4 S's" suggested by Tracy Hogg. I'd watch v carefully for sleepy signals then I'd take them into the room, close curtains /turn off lights, swaddle, then sit down cuddling them. If they cried at this point, do sush pat (or give dummy if that is working for her). Carry on cuddling until they went soft and sleepy and started to close their eyes, then lay gently in the cot. If they started crying again, resume sush patting until calm and hopefully drifting off to sleep (this usually only took a minute or less if I'd cuddled for long enough beforehand). We did this before every nap and before bed. The theory is that over time you can lay them down more and more awake.

Not going to lie, it's a LOT of work in the beginning and neither of them got to the point of being able to be laid down completely awake until they started sucking their thumbs at around 4.5 months. But the dummy might help get you there quicker!

Otherwise, you could try just gradually reducing the amount you rock her, so that she is sleepy but not actually asleep, and carry on reducing from there?

My dilemma is getting her to sleep, she will only go off if being rocked or in her bouncer

Just take a long term view about it. So between now and about 6 months old, aim to:

• move less when rocking/bouncing
• rock/bounce for less time upon going to sleep
• rock bounce just to settle, then be still once settled whilst going to sleep
• start putting baby down in this settled time and doing the stationary reassurance in the cot

But don't rush. You can take your time and make these changes gradually. Just keep in mind your longer term plan and take baby steps towards it.

Thank you so much!

She really is a good little girl just didn't want to get into bad habits like I did with my other 2 sleeping in my bed for a few years
I've gone with it that they are only little for a short period of time and I shouldn't worry about it just yet as she's still so little.

No doubt I'll be on here in 6 months time stressing