When/how did you stop rocking to sleep?

[MeadowHay]

DD is 7 months and needs motion + dummy to go to sleep (although occasionally she will forget about the dummy if she's out in the pushchair and distracted enough!). Obviously she's getting heavier and it also takes aaaaaages for her to fall asleep so this can be physically taxing and is just increasingly impractical.

I don't want to distress her, or make our lives more difficult, but I'm just wondering what other people did and how did they do it? She really won't fall asleep without motion, I mean she probably would eventually but not after 2hrs+ of hysterical screaming (she cries so much as it is that she's being investigated by the GP and on the brink of being referred to a paed if this max dose of ranitidine doesn't make any difference). So it's really not a case of leaving her to cry for a few minutes or anything, otherwise we would do that.

I should say as well that probably about 75% of the time I only need to rock her until she's very drowsy, then she does the last part of falling asleep herself (in arms/legs/pushchair). I know about the Pantley method of weaning babies off things but she's been stuck at this 'level' for around 2 months and I can't seem to progress .

Sounds like you are doing well if you can just rock her until drowsy. Have you tried adding in white noise or alpha music while rocking? The idea being that the music will be able to replace the comfort of rocking. This is what the books often suggest, but don’t worry if your baby hasn’t read them ( mine hasn’t!). Keep doing what works for you, they change so quickly, so she may just figure it by herself sooner than the think

I play lullabies on my phone whilst I'm doing it, that seems to work a bit actually as you say then I can often stop before she's completely asleep. But we can't stop before like 'really drowsy and almost about to fall asleep', if you stop rocking any earlier than that she is not at all impressed .

Yea my baby doesn’t do the sleepy but awake thing either! can you rock her in the pram to save your back and then transfer her to the cot while still playing the lullaby?

I could try but I am so clumsy, I have poor motor skills as a result of being autistic so often when I move her places I wake her up, much more so than when DH moves her for example. It does recline almost flat just not 100% flat, there is a tiny raise in it.

Nobody else around to just let me know out of interest when/how you stopped rocking to sleep? I mean, it must happen at some point, I don't know of any school-aged children who are still rocked to sleep?!

I can’t help with that as I still use the pram to rock my baby to sleep during the day and then feed to sleep at night. She is one. Hopefully this reply will bump it and someone else with experience will let us know it’s not forever!

Hate to tell you this but I'm still rocking/cuddling to sleep at 16 months...

To be fair it's more cuddling now and less rocking, unless he's ill or teethy, and doesn't take long, I don't mind it really. Although I sometimes wonder if I'm creating a monster who will never be able to self settle.
I think some babies are developmentally ready sooner than others to settle on their own and I didn't want to sleep train so I have just gone with the flow. I know some people who've had some success with the pick up put down method though, haven't researched it much but you might want to look into it.

Concerningly I am really trying to stop rocking my 22mo to sleep!!

Technically I don’t rock any more but I do stand still and hold him - he is very heavy and I really can’t do it anymore! The closet I have got now is I sit in the cot and hold him (my lord how has my life got to this point lol!!).

:)

My DD just happened to settle herself to sleep one night when she was about 4 months (sorry, maybe not what you want to read). I had to pop her down for a moment to do something and then I realised she was actually quite happy, and she gurgled a bit and then fell asleep.

They are all so different but perhaps it’s worth just trying to put her down sometimes when she is sleepy and testing to see if she can settle herself. If she is unhappy then you can always pick her up again...

If she needs rocked to sleep, she needs rocked to sleep- don’t be putting yourself under pressure to “fix” something that isn’t really a problem (as long as you’re still happy to do it).

I’ve never heard of a four year old who still needs rocked to sleep- she will grow out of it.

Dd is 16 months and I still sit with her curled up on my chest on a chair in her bedroom to get her to sleep. She’s a rocket during her waking hours so I actually really enjoy that 20 minutes where I get to hold her and sniff her wee head without her trying to scramble down and run off!

I transitioned with mine to kind of lying them on their tummy and then patting them but initially quite vigorously so it was almost a rocking motion in itself.

Avebury That's how we usually resettle in the night, as she wakes up frequently in the night and the last week has been waking up loads of times crying lots and it's taking between 10 mins and 1hr to resettle her 2 or 3 times a night . But for some reason putting her to sleep like that for a nap in the day doesn't work, she just gets hysterical so I don't bother trying anymore, don't want to distress her. Maybe I will give it a go again when she's a bit older.

I don't mind holding/cuddling to sleep at all! It's just the physical rocking that is difficult because of my back. In fact I would be happy to hold her and cuddle to sleep because that way I get a cuddle and she sleeps. Now I get virtually zero cuddles because she has almost al her naps in the puschair and she doesn't want cuddles if she's not going to sleep! But she's too heavy to rock her as vigorously as she needs in my arms. So I miss the cuddles already!

Cheese Occasionally she goes asleep completely herself in the pushchair (with her dummy), like if she's very tired and I've got her all ready to go out and strapped her in etc and then am running about like a madman getting myself ready for 5 minutes and come back down and she's asleep. She's done that a few times over the last few weeks but probably twice a week tops, usually she stays either awake and ok for a few minutes, or gets upset and screams hysterically...so I know she can do it, and on a night she falls asleep being cuddled by DH without being rocked as well. Just in the daytime she won't, 90% of the time .

Ave Oh no, she's on her back while we do it, but same sort of thing!

@MeadowHay I think daytime naps are always hard as the pressure To sleep is les than at night.

Also naps quickly end, we went to two naps at around 8 months and at around 12 months we are now naturally going in o one most days. And one day there will be no naps. So keep that in mind. Naps will quickly come to an end, this won’t be forever. Try to look after your back as best you can though.