How to get my baby to soothe herself to sleep

[Linda89]

Desperate for help but can't afford a sleep consultant.
I made the mistake of letting my baby fall to sleep in my arms each night abd most nap times. Now I know I need to put her down awake but and allow her to fall asleep on her own but I don't know how to make that transition.
We have a bedtime routine which she recognises as once asleep she sleeps longer then nap timd. I try rocking her til she is drowsy but not asleep but as soon as I put her down sbe wakes right up.

Any help appreciated. On the verge of a break down

How old is she?

Is she breastfed or bottlefed? 2 of mine I carried on breastfeeding and they had to be fed or rocked, my middle one had to go onto bottles at 8 months as milk dried up in pregnancy and we gave her the bottle in the cot, watched on the video monitor until she was asleep and shed fall asleep herself.

How old is she? Don’t stress about the fact you’ve held her for sleep up to this point. You also don’t have to do the whole “put them down drowsy but awake” thing. You can start by warming her cot with a hot water bottle and laying her down with you still cuddling her while she’s asleep. Then slooooowly extract yourself and hope she stays asleep. That’s what I did! I also used a dummy so if DD woke and started to cry, I’d pop the dummy in and put on some white noise. That was when she was about 3 months old onwards.

In my experience, they get better at self-settling and sleeping on their own as they get older. DD was breastfed til 6 months and the dummy really was key to getting her to sleep in her own bed. Good luck!

Thanks, thats good to hear.
She's 3 months now. We also use a dummy as she was waking every 15-30 min, going on the breast for comfort and fallung asleep almost immediately. A dummy helped a lot.
I was in the situation you describe were I got her to doze off and put her in the co-sleeper while cuddling and slowly move away. For naps she would fall asleep on me and then go down in her moses basket for a bit. It worked really well with her waking once a night for a feed, and the odd occasion where I would give her the dummy and stroke her cheek for a few min. However thats all changed in the last week. She naps for 30 min in the am and maybe 30min in the afternoon if I'm lucky then wakes arouns 2am and then every hour after that. And everyone is suddenly saying I have to put her down awake.
We bought a my hummy which helps her stay asleep for the first bit of bed time (times when she stirs and would normally have woken) but doesnt help get her to sleep and doesnt seem to work after her night feed.
Im back to work in 3 weeks and am worrying that I will still wake up with her (OH will be dealing with her during the night as he will be off).

Some babies respond well to being put down drowsy but awake. Some (including mine) absolutely loathe it and end up so hysterical and overtired that they are awake for hours. By all means try, but if you gave the latter type do not feel bad. Sleeping in shifts (one in with the child, the other in a different room) saved our sanity - I found that if I got one reliable stretch of sleep I could make do with broken sleep for the rest of the night.

The good news is it will probably all be different again next week! This might be a rough patch. She might be going through a growth spurt and so need more calories, hence waking up more often. Try to feed her more during the day?

Also try as best you can to get her to nap more often in the day time. I found if DD didn’t get enough daytime sleep, we’d have a broken night. Even if you can get her to cat nap late, say 5pm, that might help. It did for us.

I feel for you going back to work, but it’s good to hear you have a partner to help with the wake ups. You’ll probably still wake up though! It’s just how we are wired.