HOW do you get your baby to self settle

[Horehound]

Reading threads about people's kids self soothing at a few weeks through to early months....how did they learn to do it?

Did you sleep train them and if so, what did you do?

My DS is 18 months and still needs us with him to go to sleep. Granted this is now just a hand hold but there’s been many months before that of cuddling to sleep, then back rubbing etc.

I think it’s totally normal to need the help. We do use the Ferber method in the middle of the night but that’s only since he’s been about 16months and lost the ability to re-settle in the night, resulting in sometimes 4 hours of awake time

This is interesting to me because nobody talked about 'self settling' or 'sleep training' years ago. It seems to be the thing now. I never did it, the baby either slept or not but I always had them in the same room as me downstairs and carried up to bed when asleep.

A child will eventually go to sleep on their own but it isn't something that can be forced.

Thedrowners30 Wed 26-Feb-20 21:32:26
You don’t. Self settling is developmental...it can’t be taught.
You can train your baby to be quiet because nobody is going to come and pick him/her up but it’s not the same thing

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/sarahockwell-smith.com/2014/06/30/self-settling-what-really-happens-when-you-teach-a-baby-to-self-soothe-to-sleep/amp/
................
I agree wholeheartedly with that.

@Thedrowners30
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/sarahockwell-smith.com/2014/06/30/self-settling-what-really-happens-when-you-teach-a-baby-to-self-soothe-to-sleep/amp/

That is a very interesting read and reassuring, if not alarming. The gist of the article is that you aren't training them to self soothe, you are teaching them that nobody comes when they cry so why bother. Why bother crying even if something IS wrong. Quite scary actually.

Right now though I should be asleep as my daughter finally settled an hour ago.

Sorry, I don't take much stock of that link.she is trying to flog her own book ffs!
The Romanian orphanage story was debunked because there were soooo many other issues going on there.

@Lynda07ynda you say you take the baby up to bed when they were asleep but how did the actually fall asleep downstairs? My problem was he had to be held and rocked with us standing for 1+hours to fall asleep and then wake immediately after being put down. It was taking forever.
We've now mastered getting him down in 5-10mins but there are still some tears and I want to get to the point of a no tear bedtime!

You have to be lucky and get a quiet baby.

There quite rare but do exist, my family has a scattering of babies (some now adults) who just self settle, rarely cry and sleep through the night from 2 weeks.

DOn't think I'm being smug, all of them have siblings who were very different.

Honestly op, it will happen in time. Where you are now is great for 6 months. At that point I was still back rubbing for half an hour - an hour a night.

DS only really started more self settling after 12 months, some babies in my NCT still can’t do it at 18 months - DS only properly does it for naps and sort of does it for bedtime. It’s totally developmental.

Thanks @willow4987
So do all these babies cry too? I feel like it's just my baby crying at bedtime!

Oh god yeah! DS still cries if I try and sneak out and he’s not quite asleep! It’s the only way they can communicate effectively at this age.

My niece is 2.5 years and still has someone sat with her while she goes to sleep. Granted she’s self settling, but still needs the extra comfort of someone being there. She cry’s if she’s left too.

Aww all these babies crying I really hate it :( but what you're saying is making me feel better.

Fuck sake I am at the end of my tether again. We had two weeks of pretty good night time betimes but last two nights it's out the window and he will just not go down screamed for an hour. Nothing worked. So then what do I do?

They go through phase of doing this. You’re doing a great job, you just have to be consistent with your routine and ride it out.

It could be anything...teething, sleep regression, developmental stage etcb

It makes me feel so bad because I feel angry and frustrated. Poor little sausage was so tired he was furious.

Ah I know it’s so hard especially when it feels like they’ve regressed! Just keep doing your routine and it will fall back into place eventually. If that means that they need you to comfort them to sleep, then so be it! Eventually they’ll grow out of it

My 15wo pretty much always cries as he goes to sleep, sometimes just for 30 seconds sometimes for a whole hour. It is definitely worse when he's overtired but seems to happen even if he has great naps.
I think he dislikes the feeling of being really tired and doesnt understand it, so cries.
Loud white noise often helps A LOT.

Ha I use loud white noise every night but it wasn't doing a thing for him unfortunately. I had to pick him up, play with him for ten mins, he fed for two mins and then fell asleep although he did start crying as soon as he was lowered j to the cot but then it only took a few mins to get him down
Now I'm questioning if he was even tired when I first put him in but him sure he was.
He's woken up for two feeds now and he is full of the cold so maybe that's played a part too

Horehound, just seen your question.

It was different at different times depending on how old my baby was; when he was virtually new born he was colicky and needed comfort but the colic didn't last; we'd have him downstairs with us in carry cot or holding him or having him lie down between us on sofa while we talked or watched TV - talked to him too. Like many others on here, he liked being on our chests, next to heartbeat. When he got to the stage of reaching for things and sitting up he'd play with toys, we would play too as well as doing our own thing. He had a bouncy chair which he liked. When crawling he was very good with toys and enjoyed hide and seek. Later pulling himself up to stand and then walking. Always loved music (is a professional musician). and sang. It all seemed quite normal to us whereas putting him in bed upstairs alone didn't. He'd go to sleep eventually often stretched over our laps. He was a very contented child who grew up to be an extremely creative adult.

I recognise my ideas of baby care were not conventional but I went with my instincts and it seemed to work. I can't say I was a very conventional person by nature so it came naturally. My earliest memories are of being put to bed and lying awake for hours, what was the point in that when I could have been doing something interesting?

Everyone has to do what is right for them and their baby, it's nobody else's business. Babies are individuals, there's no one rule fits all; as long as they are loved and well looked after they'll be fine.

My little man is 8 months old and still sometimes wakes once in the night just for a little pat and off back to sleep. It’s the way he is, sometimes he just wants to know that mum and dad are still there. Sometimes when I put him down at bedtime he likes a little pat or head stroke too. I wouldn’t trade those lovely minutes in for all the world, watching him drift off.

Babies are so different.

DD1 woke every 1.5 hours for a year. Didn't sleep through till the week after her 2nd birthday. I tried every trick going, even attempted cry it out a few disparate nights. She just needed to be ready.

DD2 has done 5-9hour stretches since birth, is 9 weeks now. I have done nothing differently, it's just what she does. I genuinely never believed these babies really existed. I'm very aware this may all change by the way!

So please don't beat yourself up about it. I think I was more stressed that I was failing and trying to implement new ideas than the actual exhaustion. I survived DD1 by co-sleeping and long walks in the buggy, I miss both of those now ☹️ Your baby will get there.

@Lynda07 I love your post.

It saddens me that as a society we want to force babies to be independent. That's the beauty of babies, they're so pure, they just want reassurance.

Sleep training is such a sad implement.

@lynda07 My DC are still young and have done pretty much what you've said with them all. Elder two now go to bed with very minimal effort, pjs, story and light out. DC3 is 4 months and I feed her to sleep/very drowsy. All have slept through quite early on with no tears or drama.
Op don't feel bad about giving your son comfort/extra support at bedtime and nap time. I know he'll seem so big compared to a newborn but the reality is he's still actually very young. There's no rule to say that children must self settle by x age and need to be left to cry.

Boring and Patricks, I am relieved to read your posts :-). I thought I would be flamed. I certainly came in for thinly disguised criticism when my son was young but I wasn't swayed, I knew him. It all worked out in the end. There are far too many 'unwritten rules' in this life. Oh btw we co-slept too.

Hi everyone, thanks for your input.
Heh Lynda I did co sleep with my boy for the first 5 months and also your experience of a newborn with colic and using the basket etc is very like mine. We did all that but then he was up until 11pm and we would wake up around 11am which was pretty ridiculous.
So we started this routine to get him sleeping more. It was taking me over an hour of swaying and rocking to get him to sleep and just as I put him in the cot he would wake up or only sleep twenty mins. It was hell.
So he's gone from sleeping 9/10 hours to 14 hours most days.
I'm not doing cry it out and im chatting and playing with him all the time, he's a really happy baby except for bedtime!
But I have been sucked into doing things "the right way' but it's not helped that if a dare moan to my parents that he is difficult to get down my parents tell me that babies need to just be left to cry sometimes.
They left me and my brother to cry, apparently it was just the done thing and so they don't understand when I say I don't want that to happen. Sometimes my mum has been there when I'm putting him down and he's furious and crying and she's told me not to pick him up or he just learns he gets what he wants.
Anyway in the end I think she saw we had to pick him up and he was immediately smiling. And she's like see he's an actor!

I don't feel like anything is coming naturally to me. You say you just got your baby but I just don't feel that way. Sometimes I can't tell what his cries mean and that's like the most basic thing! I feel anxious when we have to go out for fear if being judged or not doing something properly but j know it's silly because when we are out we are just fine. I just see everything as a massive hassle though. I don't want to change him in these horrible changing units etc

Anyway poor soul is really quite full of the cold and struggling to breath so he's really bit fed much at all today. He refused morning feed and so I had to try and get some yoghurt in him and then he slept on me for three hours so he's obviously needing it. He was really upset most of the afternoon and so I gave him a dose of Calpol and then my husband put him to bed whilst I went to the shop for wine (!) And I got a message from dh saying he had gone down in the fastest ever time.
I said "bet it's the Calpol"
But he's emailed me the list of what he did and he will try it again tomorrow night.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words it has made me feel better.
Oh also my cousin did cry it out and was marvelling about it how it worked in three days and her baby only cried twenty mins max
Well I tried it one night with mine and he cried over an hour and j had to give in.

We did have a unicorn baby BUT When we did have several transitions/ steps forward with sleep I thought it was impossible that she would nap in the cot/fall asleep without boob/sleep without swaddle/nap for more than 40 mins etc and every time we tried the transition a couple times and then she was fine. We also realized pretty early on that going in repeatedly made it worse, ultimately she would cry much longer.

If your kiddo is gaining weight well without underlying health issues they don’t NEED feeding in the night and you will probably find if you drop the feeding the sleep will get better pretty quickly. I fed loads during the day to be confident Dd got enough calories.

I know any form of cry it out is frowned upon on mumsnet but DD seems like a happy chatty kiddo, and we are happy parents who get 10 hours sleep every night... so I struggle to see what’s wrong with it. Cribsheet is a book that was also very reassuring, it doesn’t advocate any particular method (other than science) but does point out that there is no high quality research that has shown evidence that some crying before sleep is harmful for kids. There is a lot of research showing that not getting enough sleep is harmful for everyone though, so on balance we have prioritized that for the whole family.

@2tired2function I'm pretty sure my cousin gave me the crib sheet thing you're talking about. This is where it debunks the Romanian orphan theory?
I think basically when you think of a baby crying you equate it to them needing something and so why would you ignore it?
Even if they are crying "just" for comfort...why wouldn't you give them it?
I mean, I'm happy for you if it worked but at what cost? No one knows.

For the last few nights sleep and naps have been pretty decent again. Just like a pp said! Although he does have a cold which is maybe playing a part not sure.

From day 1 I put both my babies down in their moses basket sleepy but awake. I didn't just abandon them, I was there and would pat/stroke them if they were grizzly. They both never had any problems self settling. Of course they woke up crying for milk - that's a biological need! But they could always fall asleep on their own.