7 month old is held and rocked to sleep and refuses to sleep any other way!

[ArcticRoll2]

Advise please ??

My 7 month old baby is held / rocked to sleep.. for every sleep (night and naps) and refuses to sleep any other way. We held her always as a new born and I think we missed the boat about when to stop to the point that all sleeps happen the same way now and I don’t know how to undone it as any way we have tried has failed miserably and ended up in a extremely grumpy and tired baby and parent!

When put down drowsy but awake, the minute DDs head hits the cot she wakes fully. we have tried leaving her to fall asleep but instead she becomes excited if we are there or irritated if not and either way starts lifting her legs in the air and banging them down and results in her crying. No matter how long I’ve left her she never self soothes and drifts of. I’ve tried the cry it out which was horrendous and needless to say ending up failing after 6 hours of her being awake I had given in as I knew she just needed to sleep.

I’ve tried the gentle cry it out with the same result and I’ve tried staying with her reassuring her but again she refuses to sleep unless held.

her sleeping routine currently - aim to be in bed by 7pm (I can then be holding her for up to 2 hours sometimes as whenever I put her down she wakes up), then when successfully in cot, she tends to wake up once / twice in the night to which she can self settle if she doesn’t want a bottle etc or will end up having a bottle normally around 5am. I then sometimes manage to get her back to sleep for around 1 hour so she is up for around 7am. She takes her first nap around 1.30 - 2.15 hrs after waking up which again she is held for and this is for the entirerty of the nap as I’ve got to the stage where it is pointless putting her down because she wakes up so much. she will nap anywhere from 30 mins to 2 hours if very tired. She will then take another nap around 2.15 hours later for the same length and again another later on which I try to keep to around 30 minutes. I try to ensure a calming bedtime routine with baby massage, combing hair, white noise and lullabies playing so she knows when bed time is here.

I know I have probably made a rod for my own back but if anyone has any experience in breaking this sleep association, please advise !

thankyou

Hi.

my 9mo is the same and I rock her to sleep every night but I do try and put her down before she’s fully asleep. I tend to put her down quickly, roll her onto her side and pat her bum while shhhhing. This is the only thing that works apart from rocking, and I’m sure there will be something that your dd likes too.

if she’s waking when you put her down at bedtime, could her bedtime be too early? I find if my dd wakes up at 7am, she won’t go down for the night till around 8.30pm! (Took us lots of trial and error to figure this out)

also, how long is her wake window between her last nap and bedtime?

My DD was EXACTLY the same. HV advice was not to worry about contact naps for now but focus on bedtime. We did Pick Up Put Down and within 2 nights we would cuddle her to sleep and she would go though. www.whattoexpect.com/first-year/sleep/pick-up-put-down-method-sleep-training/ The first night it took 45mins of constant picking up and putting down before she even fell asleep but it really made a huge difference to us.

Once bedtime sleep was sorted, we then did the same for naps. So mini version of the routine and again, pick up put down when she woke. Within a week she was happily having cot naps. Gave me so much time back!

Ferber method for us. Started with naps as easier to sort if it goes wrong. But we now have a 2 yo who sleeps beautifully and I’m convinced it’s thanks to sleep training.

What is the problem?

Drowsy but awake is bullshit.

Cry it out doesn’t work (and there is no gentle cry it out either) - baby wakes just the same amount they just don’t cry out as they know nobody is coming. So they lay there upset and distressed.

Self soothing isn’t possible at such a young age.

You haven’t made “a rod for your own back”. You are attending to your baby’s needs. There’s nothing wrong with being rocked or held. So I don’t see the problem 🤷‍♀️

This was DD, I rocked her for every nap and bedtime until she was too heavy for me to do it anymore at 9 months, when she was tiny she'd only settle with me rocking her Moses basket so I'm pretty sure that's where we started. I'm not going to lie it was a loooooong slog to move away from it but now she's 2.5 and goes to sleep herself in her bed with me sitting beside her. This is what we did...
a couple of weeks before we stopped rocking/swaying her to sleep I put on a white noise machine so she started to associate it with sleep. We had a rocking chair that she'd never let me rock her on but I persevered for a few days and started sitting in that for naps and bedtime, eventually she went to sleep in my arms with me rocking in the chair. After that I slowly stopped rocking when she was getting drowsy and then brought it forward slightly each night until we didn't rock at all, she'd then fall asleep on me and I'd move her to her cot when sleeping.
We switched her to a toddler bed around 18 months and we decided to get rid of the rocking chair at the same time, which I was really worried about as I thought she was never going to settle but actually it went really well and she's been amazing at just going to bed and straight to sleep ever since.

I don’t like the ‘rod for your own back’ framing either and agree with @waveyourpompoms.

That said, physically rocking a baby is hard going so maybe that’s where you need to go to as your first point with reducing that sleep aid. I sympathise as dd was a baby hellbent on getting you to stand with her and my back just couldn’t do it! We ‘compromised’ on reducing down to sitting cuddles in a rocking chair moving down to me lying next to her over the course of a few months. I already know what some will say but frankly even gentle methods ended up with a baby that cried herself into a rage, fell asleep then woke twenty minutes later still bloody furious!

I had my limits and she had hers, the trick was finding a middle ground that worked for both of us in the end.

I also used to listen to podcasts with earbuds to make it less of an all encompassing situation. I actually kind of miss my podcasts now we’re way past that stage - I never seem to have the chance anymore!

Completely agree with waveyourpompoms.

Cosleep and baby feels cuddled. You also get sleep.

Look up the cosleep guidelines on la leche league.

Oh bless you, that sounds hard going! My baby (11 months) is the opposite and has always sucked his thumb and had no issues whatsoever with sleep. I read Gina Ford when I was pregnant (didn’t do anything harsh or put him in his own room early like she suggests, just followed the ideas). There’s a section in that book for case studies and there’s some that sound exactly like your situation. What I would say is he is an absolute dream but even he has started to struggle a bit when put down for a nap in the day now and I can see it being an age thing where it’s just going to get worse so I’d say try and get it sorted asap to avoid that as much as possible. In the book there are very specific ways of doing things so it doesn’t just say ‘put them down and leave them to cry it out’, literally everyone I know who uses it has a dream sleeper so it’s definitely worth a look if you haven’t already. Hope you get it sorted soon 🤞🏼

I did this with both of .one. hard work but my choice. Dd1 got to a point were she was ready to sleep alone. Ds1 coslept for years. I look back now with fond memories as they are 8 & 6 but it is hard work. Do what works for you.