Shuffly baby ... all night long

[popgoesperfection]

Ds is 13 week, sleeps in a sleeping bag and has a dummy. To settle himself to sleep he moves his head from side to side and rubs his forehead with his hands. Last few nights he has done this to 'settle' himself but it's taking a hour of replacing the dummy and him shuffling to get himself settled back down. Tonight I have been helping him settle since 1:05am and he's STILL shuffling 😩 has anyone got any tips, could it be part of the 4th leap? Early 4m sleep regression? Help!!

No idea, sorry.

DD is 9 weeks old, and has gone from being a great sleeper to constant dozing and fidgeting in the last week. Solidarity.

What happens if you leave him to his shuffling for a few mins? Does he settle eventually?

Mine used to wave his arms up and down constantly at this age as part of a self settling thing. Problem was he’d wake himself up so I used to hold them down when he got too thrashy

If he doesn't knock his dummy out he'll settle himself but if he knocks it out he'll start crying.

Swaddle! Will stop the shuffling! We swaddled till 9 months with a zipper grobag our little Houdini could t escape from.

Our LO is younger than yours but we’ve found he gets furious if the dummy gently falls out as he drops off, but can tolerate having it firmly pulled out while he is nodding off. Strange but might be worth a go?!

@2tired2function We are also a big fan of a swaddle but I thought we should stop swaddling once they can roll over? Have you had any issues?

DD was a right shuffler (and grunter) until maybe 14/15 weeks, then it got better. It was partly to do with her working out how to use her digestive system. Hope it gets better soon.

P.S. if you're going to try swaddling, remember you'll need to stop doing it once baby can roll over, which may not be all that far off.

Exactly what my baby does. I just leave her to it so she can learn to put herself to sleep. Unless she gets upset I let her shuffle away. I find if I leave her to shuffle she will stay asleep longer once she does doze off.

Try a sleep feed, this usually puts my wee one into a deeper sleep and stops the shuffling. It's like if she's not totally full/satisfied she can't completely settle.

Also could be gas? In which case try raising their little legs against their tummy a few times before sleep.

@ChelseaCat DD was a very late roller so it wasn’t much of an issue, I think it’s also really an issue once they roll back to front, which they do much later and I think it pretty hard for them to do when they are swaddled. Dd also HATED tummy time so we were pretty confident she would scream in the unlikely event she did manage to roll over! We also kicked her out of our room at 3 months though so definitely didn’t follow all the recommendations.

Also had a shuffler, she used to shuffle to end of cot and have her legs up in the air. She didn’t seem bothered so we left her to it! Also rubbed herself a bald patch because she used to wiggle her head back and forth.

Once she moved to sleeping on her tummy, her comfort thing was licking her sheets... it was pretty special.

@2tired2function - wasn’t meant to sound judgey re stopping swaddling! I want to keep going as long as possible as he loves it! Your LO sounds hilarious. Amazing what methods they find to sooth themselves

@2tired2function that's brill!! Thanks for your advice everyone.

@ChelseaCat I didn’t think you were at all, no worries! We were worried about it too (literally every weekend I would think we have to stop now!!), we tried to think about what the recommendations were trying to prevent and how that applied to where DD was developmentally.