When does rocking to sleep become a problem?

[Sunlighthouse]

I have an 8 week old DD. She loves motion to get to sleep. She has most of her naps in the sling and before bed I usually bounce her on a yoga ball to get her to sleep.

I'm breastfeeding but she doesn't really feed to sleep.

For now this is ok but I obviously don't want to be doing this for years. She won't go to sleep any other way though and it's too young to sleep train now. When do I need to worry and how can I wean her off this?

We rocked to sleep at night for the first 2 months or so, and for naps a bit longer (or used a pram etc). I decided to try and nip it in the bud as I was a bit worried about forming habits. For me, I sort of slowly transitioned out of it. So start with whatever he goes down easier for out of naps and night time - for us it was night time. So I'd rock him until very sleepy then put him down and put my hand on his chest/stomach and sort of gently rocking him back and forth in the cot until he fell asleep. Then I'd put him down less and less sleepy. Then gradually I'd take my hand away before he fell asleep, and sometimes he would fall asleep by himself (or sometimes I'd have to put it back and rock him again!) I'd say we gradually weaned him off rocking to being able to self settle between 2 months and 7 months. He is now 8 months and self settles for all naps and sleep. It didn't involve any crying either because if he cried I'd either pick him up or shush him and he would calm. It takes a fair amount of perseverance as you can probably tell, but it's good to know he has learnt some useful sleep skills!

Thank you! It sounds like you were in exactly the same position I am now (we will be 2 months tomorrow).

I think I'm going to try and do what you did. It will have to start with night time as my eldest DD is around in the day but that's ok.

It's worth a try! Good luck, I hope it works for you!

We were rocking / feeding to sleep until last week (9 months) but DD is well over 10kg and was taking ages to settle, waking multiple times a night and my back was always hurting so we’ve started controlled crying a few nights ago - night 5 and she fussed for 3 minutes then fell asleep for 9 hours! Fed then back down without a fuss :)