Baby needs to go into cot in own room but can't self settle.

[Clevs]

My son will be five months old in a couple of days. He has outgrown his Moses basket so now needs to go into his cot. I know he should be in the same room as us until 6 months if we follow the safer sleep advice, but his cot won't fit in our room so he'll be going into his own room and we will have the monitor on him.

However, he can't fall asleep on his own yet. He needs to be rocked to sleep which is fine in the Moses basket but we will obviously be unable to do that in the cot. So how do we get him to sleep? He doesn't like being rocked/bounced in our arms any more, plus he's too heavy to be doing it for too long anyway. He sometimes feeds to sleep and I can put him down without waking him, but not every time. Sometimes he stirs when I put him down but a few rocks of the basket and he's asleep again. Other times (like tonight) I fed him but he was still quite awake when he'd finished feeding (even though he was tired) so had to be rocked off. I tried leaving him to see what he'd do but he just started kicking, playing with the handles on the basket, smiling at me etc.

I'm concerned how we're going to get him to sleep in his cot without being able to rock him, but he can't stay in his basket much longer. He should have been out of it a couple of weeks ago really but we kept him in it as we went on holiday and didn't want to introduce anything new away from home.

It's not that he can't self settle that I'm concerned about as I realise he's still quite young, it's how we get him to sleep in an unrockable cot.

Forgot to mention, we don't want to co-sleep and are reluctant to rely on a dummy although if push comes to shove we may consider it. Would prefer to try without first though.

Maybe try stroking or patting to sleep instead? DS loves a back stroke and bottom pat, or forehead stroke. I used it instead of the rocking, it took a while at first.

You’re unlikely to find anything he will continue to fit in that you can rock... If he’s 5 months and doesn’t currently have a dummy then he probably will refuse one so I suspect that ship has sailed. Have you tried stroking or patting his back? At that age I mostly fed to sleep though, and it didn’t do us any harm whatsoever long term.

Bum pats and singing lullabies worked for my boys x

I had a chair in ds’s room where I held and rocked him on my lap until he went to sleep. I then gradually reduced the support I gave him e.g just holding him, comforting him in the cot, sitting near the cot, sitting in the room , sitting in the doorway etc until he self settled. It took a while and he did cry a bit at each transition but he got there in the end!

Ok, a tiny amount of progress. I've tried patting, stroking his forehead, singing lullabies, letting him cry for a bit....everything that has been mentioned. Nothing alone has worked, however I have downloaded a white noise app which seems to be having a slight effect. I play that with a combination of patting, stroking his forehead and rocking on & off but stopping the rocking then he's in the zone to allow him to drift off on his own. We need to gradually decrease the rocking rather than just stop altogether.

We'll do this until the end of the week and then at the weekend when my husband doesn't have to get up for work we'll move him into the cot in his basket until he's used to being in a different room, and then remove the basket.

I'm under no illusion that we will have our work cut out and we will not get results overnight. But hopefully a gradual transition like I've described will get us there.

We found it took at least three days at each stage of the gradual transition. I was feeding ds1 to sleep and I was amazed when we managed to get him to sleep without a feed for the first time and when he eventually went to sleep by himself I was even more amazed! It will happen with patience and perseverance!