10 week old Velcro baby - help with settling to sleep at night

[teamseashore]

I think we have fallen into some bad sleep habits with our baby that we need to change, but I’m not sure where to start really!

In the early weeks I was really struggling with sleep deprivation and so my husband and I agreed that he would look after baby from about 8.30pm so I could head to bed and get a few hours kip before doing the night shift. He’d basically sit on the sofa cuddling baby (because she refuses to sleep in her cot or Moses basket at this time), wake her for a feed about 11.15pm and then bring her upstairs to settle her in the cot in our room.by about midnight.

Basically we really want to get her in the cot in the bedroom earlier but we really don’t know where to start with this. A few nights she woke up hungry about 9.30pm and we tried to just settle her in the cot at that time but she was having none of it and would not settle until around midnight. I should clarify that normally she konks out on my husbands lap from around 7pm and he has to wake her to feed her before bringing her upstairs.

I thought we could try and bring her “bedtime “ forwards gradually, eg by 15 mins every 5 days or so, and see if she gets used to setting in the cot earlier. However, I wondered today if I should be tackling a different issue first- the fact that she has to cuddled in the evening otherwise she will not sleep. I guess she has got used to that, which is probably contributing to our difficulty in getting her to settle earlier in her cot.

Anyone any ideas? I know she is only 10 weeks so still so young but I feel like settling her in the cot upstairs at midnight is really late and it would be much better for all concerned if she would go in the cot earlier. I’m not expecting a 7pm bedtime or anything yet, but if we had her asleep in the cot by 10pm I’d be very happy!

Hi

I had problems with my baby for a few weeks with this! She wouldn't settle in her crib and would sleep on me fine! What I started to do was try putting her in the crib for daytime naps too, this sometimes works but not always! Does she nap on you in the day too? But we also put her in her crib slightly drowsy but awake and she now seems to settle herself. She does this every night now, we usually feed her, her last bottle around 10pm and she manages to settle in her crib by herself she's 9 weeks.

I also found the room needs to be dark, we just gradually stopped letting her sleep on us so much and she's now much better at settling and staying in her crib. I would maybe try the 15 minute thing as midnight is abit of a pain of a time but we found 9/10 is a good last feed time and then bed xx

Hi Emma, thanks for your message, I have been thinking about trying to get her to nap in the cot upstairs. What did you do first, putting her in the crib drowsy but awake for daytime naps, or nighttime? At night my baby falls asleep as I feed her so I don’t really want to wake her up to do this. We can actually get her to sleep in the upstairs cot between about midnight and 7am, its getting her to bed earlier that is the difficulty.

I am trying really hard during the day to not let her nap on me all the time. We have a Moses basket downstairs and I try and put her to sleep in that. However I end up cuddling her to sleep first and transferring her, and the longest she will stay asleep is 30 minutes. If I put her in awake she just cries. I get concerned about her not getting enough sleep during the day (which just makes her really cranky) so end up either going out for a walk ( she will sleep in the baby carrier and for a short while in the prom) or letting her sleep on me for a while. For example today I managed two 30 minute Moses basket naps, went for a walk late morning and she slept for nearly an hour in the pram, and then I ended up letting her sleep on me late afternoon because she was starting to get really cranky and crying. It feels like a bit of a daily battle!

Try her in a swaddle and with a dummy- both help for independent sleep.

@teamseashore I did this with daytime naps first to get her used to the crib more as when she was only a few weeks old she wouldn't even go in the crib! We tried loads of things to get her in there but as we kept doing it she got more used to it. So we would go drowsy but awake and pop her in, sometimes we found white noise helped I have an app on my phone called baby sounds and she likes the ssh one.

We then after her last bottle at night would pop her in and she can now settle herself to sleep. We did used to swaddle but a week or so ago she was breaking out and then crying more so we trialled her without swaddle and this worked! She likes to bury her face under her little muslin, she occasionally has her dummy but can settle without it. I think just persistence helped us. She doesn't always settle so easy for her daytime naps she's too nosey! But at night she does go down really well.

For example last night she had her bottle at 6.30 she went to sleep at 8 was due her next bottle later than usual as she slept longer during the day so she was due 10.30 but she didn't wake up! We put her down drowsy and she literally stayed asleep 8-4 we were so shocked!

Don't get me wrong it doesn't always work that way for us sometimes she only naps for half hour. There are days where I do give in and just keep her with me as I think the same about worrying about her not sleeping enough. However if I leave her long enough I can transfer her and she will stay asleep for a couple of hours. It's so difficult I completely get it just kinda trial and error.

Does she have a dummy? Have you tried a swaddle?