Does your baby just “go to sleep”?

[crazychemist]

Curious as to whether there are ANY babies that just “go” to sleep without being settled by an adult?

Websites about sleep often talk about “drowsy but alert” etc, which was something I honestly never achieved with my DD (4yo now, sleeps just fine but we never did do any sleep training or such). Do these babies actually exist, that self-settle at a young age?

Currently trying to settle my newborn twins by any possible method. I’m very aware of safe cosleeping rules, but finding them very much harder to follow with twins. I have had absolutely no success settling them in their cot so far and am wondering whether I’m doing something wrong/it’ll improve if I persist/it’s just their personality.

Our DD always has gone down awake and settled really well, it’s the stay asleep during the night we struggle with 🤣🤣 she’s 15 months and has never ever slept through!!

@crazychemist my friend had twins and used to settle them in contact with each other so they could feel each other's heartbeats and thought they were being held. Not sure if that could work or if it's safe?

My son was always great at going over to sleep himself. However staying asleep for any length of time was a disaster. I ended up getting a sleep consultant when he was 14mths, and he's slept through the night 99% of the time since then.

We have 15 month old twins. We could never put them down awake. We rocked them to sleep from the start and also bed shared from 3 to 5.5 months. At 15 months we can lay with our girl twin and she will go to sleep with minimal help from us (bum patting and singing). We sit with my boy twin in a rocking chair and then lay him down asleep. I’m fortunate that my husband has always been around at bedtime. I had to do bedtime by myself once at around 4.5 months. I rocked them to sleep in the rocking chair and then laid down with them in our bed.

Thank you for all your replies. Sounds like such babies do exist but are rare!

I have one twin that drifts off pretty quickly after a feed (more quickly after bottle than breast) and one that seems to take forever to nod off (he’s a less efficient feeder, so I wonder if it just takes him longer to fill up). But both currently require either feeding to sleep or rocking to get them down. They are still very small though - they haven’t reached their due date yet (they were premature). At the moment they sleep for a good 3 hours at night, but I know this is likely to go horribly wrong at some stage . I’m just worried about how it will work if they are both awake and needing constant resettling during the night....

I have found cosleeping much better this week. Until now, they were more or less impossible to put down and wanted to be held all night. This week I’ve been able to settle them on their backs in the middle of my bed (firm mattress, pillows and duvet well clear, DH sleeping in spare room). They do seem to find each other comforting.

My second did, my first definitely didn't.

My first we did all sorts of faffing around trying to settle her, put her down without waking her, stroking, rocking, creeping away...

Second child. First day home. Put down in carry cot in the evening while still awake. Walk away. Not a peep. Falls asleep. And it was pretty much always like that! Amazing!! (he didn't sleep all the way through for a while, but settled back down again with little problem).

DD1 we spent hours every day rocking her to sleep in the pram and hours every night bouncing, rocking, feeding her to sleep. Co-slept from 6 to 20 months for my sanity as she woke so often and needed help to get back to sleep.

DD2 I was expecting the same, at about 3/4 months one evening I was giving her her bedtime feed and she didn't fall asleep and I was desperate for a wee so I put her in her cot and said sarcastically to DH 'maybe she'll just fall asleep LOL' - looked at the video monitor and she was serenely drifting off. Couldn't believe it. She's done the same pretty much every night since (only a few months). She still wakes twice in the night and doesn't self settle for naps but I'm still flabbergasted, and possibly still shell shocked from DD1 so live in fear of losing my evening to sitting rocking, feeding, creeping around again if/when she regresses...!

Oh and I still can't work out whether with DD1 all our fussing meant she didn't have the chance to go to sleep without intervention, or whether all the fussing was required because she wasn't able to do it. But I do think temperament has a lot to do with it. And maybe second children are just more used to not being fussed over constantly with other children to attend to?