Self soothing

[2littleboymonkeys]

Hi all, on my second baby now and still can't seem to nail them self soothing. My toddler still wants to hold my hand if her wakes at night, luckily for me he tends not too.
I now have a 4 month old who is a terrible sleep, screams until he can fall asleep on the boob. Tonight he woke up and spent 15 mins trying to self settle, sucking his fingers etc... then he just went mad took half an hour of stroking him in his cot to get him to stop crying then I picked him up once settled, anyway two hours later and I have just fed him because it's now time for a feed, and he has gone straight off again.

Help help help

I need a strategy to teach my baby how to fall asleep. He is 4 months

Are you Co sleeping? We have a side crib for our 6 month old. She doesn't self settle but she falls asleep on the boob and having her next to me makes it so much easier! I've given up patting to sleep now. I figure why pat for half an hour stressing myself out when I can just stick a boob at her and feed for 5 minutes. She wakes up every hour/ 2 hours I pop a boob over and within 10 minutes I'm asleep again. Hoping she'll stop feeding to sleep when she's ready.

He's 4 months. He won't self settle yet.

No I don't have a next to me. Keep reading about them they sound fab but I have an angel mat which won't work in one.

I'm up every two hours, he won't self soothe when I shhhhh and don't pick him up he just gets more and more wound up. Realised it was two hours i was trying to settle him earlier.

I have stopped driving because I'm worried I'm going to crash the car and I am desperately trying to keep myself awake while feeding etc as worried I'm going to drop him.

Why torture yourself though? They're so tiny at 4 months it's natural that they want cuddles and to have you close. if you're breastfeeding and you can get him to sleep in 5 minutes by feeding then why spend two hours trying to settle without?

We've started leaving her longer to 'self settle' during nap time but aren't even thinking about it right now at night time.

If you are breast feeding I'd recommend picking up a copy of boobin all day boobin all night by Meg nagle it really helped ease my mind.

@MasterSensei Thankyou I'll read up. I had a sleep consultant when my eldest started vomiting in his cot so have dug out her book as she does baby led multi sensory sleep soothing to self settle so I'm going to try this at nap time tomorrow.

I just can't feed him every two hours I'm so tired something will happen sooner or later, crashed car or worse falling asleep holding him. I couldn't even remember my PIN number at the shops earlier.

Fingers crossed I can get somewhere tomorrow and get a few hours.

Tonight he is asleep so I am going to bed. Wish me luck

Thanks again everyone it's nice just to know your out there tbh xx

This is normal really - my 5mo has woken every 1-2hrs since birth and it has never really improved - though I know that doesn’t help you. I am absolutely exhausted but there isn’t a great deal I can do about it until he is ready developmentally to change

He is actually capable of self-settling to sleep now - I didn’t teach him to but he started out as a baby who would only sleep on us and now quite often I can put him in his cot and he will roll around a bit and then drop off. However, just to put a downer on your hopes, This makes zero difference to the amount of wake-ups as the reasons for him waking up (wanting to feed, have a cuddle etc) haven’t gone away just because he can drop off to sleep by himself

Really try to maximise the amount of sleep you can under the circumstances - cosleeping and feeding lying down can help (though I find I can’t do this all the time as the fixed sleeping position hurts my back and hips), or maybe if you have a partner who could do the wake-ups and bring the baby to you for feeds and take them away again so you’re not so disturbed

You have my sympathy - sleeping in such tiny bursts is so hard

Bananarama12 My four month (and four days) old self soothes no problem. I swaddle him, put him in his cot and walk away. He closes his eyes and goes to sleep. Same with after his bottle in the night, I wrap him up and back to bed. He’s been this way for at least a month now. But he has to be swaddled.

No advice for the OP though as he’s formula fed.

I know it seems to be against the general consensus of the UK but I also have used a pacifier/dummy which works brilliantly for him. But I’m American/Canadian and we love them.

A good proportion of the babies my son’s age have or have had dummies - I haven’t noticed an aversion to them in the UK

My 9month old is still relying on a boob all night. He screamed for 2hr30 last night because he wanted boobed to sleep. He wakes every 15-90mins. He was such an amazing sleeper until 12weeks aswell